The Awl

Twitter Users Sad

Alex Balk — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:10:41 +0000

"We're getting progressively unhappier according to a recent University of Vermont study, which analyzed more than 46 billion words tweeted by 63 million users around the globe. 'We're at our lowest point now in four years as far as our measure of happiness through Twitter goes,' says Peter Dodds, an applied mathematician at UVM and the lead author of the study. The 46 billion words Dodds and his team analyzed varied widely—everything from 'pancakes' to 'suicide'—which they then compared to scores given to the most common 10,000 words in the English language. For instance, a word such as 'laughter' earned an average 'happiness score' of 8.5 out of 9, while the word 'terrorist' got 1.30."

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Joseph Brooks, 1938-2011

Dave Bry — Mon, 23 May 2011 09:05:32 +0000

In news you should not take personally, the man who wrote "You light up my life/You give me hope to carry on," killed himself yesterday. It is actually a very sad and disturbing story. Joseph Brooks was awaiting trial on 82 charges of sexual misconduct, including rape. His son, Nicholas, is awaiting trial on charges that he murdered his girlfriend, Sylvie Cachay, in December.

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The Suicide Checklist

Alex Balk — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:30:58 +0000

The six steps of the escape theory, or the stages a person goes through leading up to suicide. You might want to keep this one handy for future reference.

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The Why We Jump Now

Alex Balk — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:20:37 +0000

We are a resourceful bunch here in town: "In fact, according to statistics from from city health officials and the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, more than one out of seven jumper suicides nationally between 1999 and 2007 (the most distant and recent years that national data is available) happened in New York City.... Since New York has less handguns and rifles per capita than other parts of the country, [Ann Haas, the director of suicide-prevention projects for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention] said, people bent on suicide in the city find other means, often jumping."

Photo by oscartellyman, from Flickr.

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American Empathy Watch: When Suicide Jumpers Destroy Our Cars

Choire Sicha — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:00:47 +0000

"A New Jersey woman is devastated that her precious sports car — just repaired and fully gassed up — was wrecked by a suicidal man's 40-story attempted death leap on the Upper West Side.... "I miss it. It's my baby," moaned Maria McCormack... 'Why? Why my car out of all the cars in the city?'.... Meanwhile, a Dodge spokesman credited the car's 'high-strength steel structure' for helping absorb the blow." Really, everyone comes out a winner in this one.

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Italian Dog Suicides

Alex Balk — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:30:28 +0000

Say what you will about the Italians, at least they're-wait, what? "The fact that thousands of Italian families leave their pets to mope around at home while they go on holiday has been a scandal for years. The problem is said to be in decline, with only 7,000 dogs left behind today compared to 9,000 three years ago, but that is still a lot of miserable animals. This year concern at the problem flared up again on account of the new phenomenon of alleged dog suicides: two temporarily abandoned dogs, one in Rome and one in Bolzano in the far north, were apparently so distraught at being left alone for weeks on end that they hurled themselves to their deaths from the balconies of their masters' apartments."

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Minnesota Man Charged With Being More Evil Than Ozzy Osbourne

Dave Bry — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:00:23 +0000

If Ozzy Osbourne can be sued, albeit unsuccessfully, for encouraging suicide with a song about alcoholism, then William F. Melchert-Dinkel is in big, big trouble. A 47-year-old licensed nurse from Faribault, Minnesota, Melchert-Dinkel has been charged with two counts of illegally aiding suicide. Prosecutors say that he sought out depressed people on website chatrooms, engaged them in conversation under false pretenses and pushed them to kill themselves-sometimes even making a suicide pact. One that he very rudely would not keep.

The dark story goes like this.

"In March 2008, Nadia Kajouji, 18, disappeared from her college in Ottawa. The Canadian authorities investigating her disappearance searched her laptop and discovered that she had been talking online with a person who used the screen name Cami. In e-mail messages, the authorities say, the pair agreed to a pact in which Ms. Kajouji would jump from a bridge into a river (to avoid, at Cami's suggestion, the police say, creating a mess) and Cami would hang herself a day later. In April 2008, Ms. Kajouji's body was found in the Rideau River."

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M.I.A., "Born Free"

Maura Johnston — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:20:10 +0000

Pop provocateur M.I.A. has been throwing elbows lately, so it probably isn't too surprising that her new single "Born Free" (warning: nausea-inducing animated GIF at link) is a pretty aggressive affair once it gets going, with her reverbed-out proclamations cut and pasted over a loop nicked from Suicide's "Ghost Rider." The overall vibe is very similar to the blown-out giddiness put forth by the awesome New York duo Sleigh Bells, whom M.I.A. has been speaking very highly of when she hasn't been bitching over GaGa's 1-D Grace Jones-biting. (The Sleigh Bells love, by the way, is not undeserved, if only for the rapturous "AB Machines.")

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Sleepy Priest Prevents Suicide Through Power Of Annoyance

Alex Balk — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:00:26 +0000

"I thought maybe he was taking notes. So I asked: 'Are you taking notes?' I could hear his heavy breathing before he woke up. He stayed awake for just a few more minutes before slipping off again into slumber."
-A despondent man in Sweden phoned a suicide hotline hoping for guidance only to be answered by an exhausted cleric who fell asleep during the call. The suicidal Swede was so irate that he decided against taking his own life so that he could complain about the somnolent pastor.

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Hot For Recessionary Wednesdays: Suicide

Alex Balk — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:32:42 +0000

Using European Union mortality data for a period of nearly forty years, researchers at Oxford discovered that "for every 1 per cent increase in unemployment, both suicides and homicides rose by 0.8 per cent. When employment fell by 3 per cent or more in one go, suicides leapt by 4.4 per cent and homicides by 6.0 per cent." Ruh roh! In other news about topping yourself, a new study "published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, found that people are far more likely to kill themselves in the middle of the week than in the beginning or the end: almost 25 percent of suicides occur on Wednesdays as compared to 14 percent on Mondays or Saturdays, the two days tied for second-highest suicide rates." There is an impressive chart!

Okay, these numbers all seem to check out. Like you might, because today is THE DREADED WEDNESDAY. But wait: "The study also found if you make it through Wednesday, your risk for suicide plummets by more than half the following day; Thursdays have the lowest rate, with only 11 percent of suicides." So try and hold off one more day; tomorrow's "Samantha Who?" is all new!

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