Live data from Hacker News

Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

spotthedrowningchild.com

361–370 of 424 posts

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just googled "elementary backstroke" and yeah... I'm in my forties, pretty proficient swimmer, and nobody ever showed it to me. I watch my kid's lessons and I'm sure I didn't see it being shown to them. They got into what I google as "backstroke" straight away, without the "elementary" phase.

I just looked it up and turns out that's my favourite stroke! I didn't know it had a name, I just called it the "Jellyfish" :) I don't think I was ever taught it. I think I just discovered it playing around in the water one day.

That's one of my favorites too! I didn't know it had a name either.

When I want to play around, I try swimming backwards. On my back, with my feet straight ahead and motionless, I stroke backwards with my arms so I move in the direction my feet are pointing.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including sounds , which are almost universally added to the footage in a separate processing stage, and have no relation to what has actually happened on the stage itself.

Hence why every bird of prey ever shown in any movie ever has the call of a red tailed hawk.

And every explosion in space is really really loud.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar happened to me as a kid, I decided to swim from our boat to the shore of the lake, got exhausted 100 meters from the shore. Before going in full panic mode I remembered you can basically float indefinitely on your back with very minimal effort and did just that until I was calm and rested. Turns out our mandatory swimming lessons from the age of 8 weren't as useless as I thought.

Everyone should be taught this technique. Nethertheless: I did this in the ocean once about 200m off the shore (at that point I wasn’t really in trouble and just wanted a rest) and the waves were too high and I ended up eating a lot of salt water and nearly choking and sinking. It put me in a far worse situation than had I stayed off my back.

The lay on your back technique works for those who it works for, and it should absolutely be taught to everyone just so that whoever it works for knows about it and uses it when they find themselves in a situation when it could save their life. Less drowning in calm waters is a net positive. But there is a percentage of the population who can’t simply float.

Some of us literally sink if we don’t swim.

One time my friend looked at me in awe as I laid on my back, relaxed, and sunk. We tried it over and over again. I was as curious as she was. She had to put her hands under my body to keep my body above water. When she removed her hands I’d begin to submerge, just laying on my back, arms stretched out, until I was fully underwater. But she did the same and she would float.

I wasn’t tense, but rather relaxed and not panicking, since I could swim (the only way I know to stay afloat) and knew she was right there. And I mean, not that hard to just lie there calm and relaxed. I have to actively swim in order to stay afloat. And I’m not the only one..

Although strangely enough dead bodies float so what’s up with that?

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#364
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most depictions of things in movies are like that. Films must show you something interesting, and watching somebody do trial and error painfully on a bash script for 6 hours is not as fun as a fast pace keyboard murder while screaming "i just passed 3 firewalls" with beautiful animations rendering on the screen. If there is a camera, what you see is a lie. The difference between a national geographic documentary and…

Even national geographic documentaries are probably "lies" ... I just had the chance to get some basic insights in to evolutionary biology ... and boy is bloody mauling and devouring of prey just the tip of the iceberg. Intraspecies rape and infanticide is pretty common out there. (Look up the penis of drakes (male ducks) and why it looks the way it does at some point) Siblings competing for food with only a small pe…

"(Look up the penis of drakes (male ducks) and why it looks the way it does at some point)"

Not to one-up you, but anyone who's at it anyway, also look up the platypus mating behavior. Spoiler: it involves 4-headed penises.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#365
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work?

Let's say you roll a dice with 100 sides. If you roll a 1, you die. If you roll anything else, you live. We want to know the probability you will die if you roll the dice 100 times. One way we could do this is look at the probability you'll roll it on the first roll... then the probability you won't roll it on the first roll but you will on the second roll... and so on. But that's a lot of math. The probability of an…

The comment that prompted the question stated the opposite probability - 99% chance of death, not life. That changes the odds quite drastically.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#366
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work?

Let's say you roll a dice with 100 sides. If you roll a 1, you die. If you roll anything else, you live. We want to know the probability you will die if you roll the dice 100 times. One way we could do this is look at the probability you'll roll it on the first roll... then the probability you won't roll it on the first roll but you will on the second roll... and so on. But that's a lot of math. The probability of an…

[deleted]

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#367
post #360

This seems like the perfect exercise for computer vision and machine learning/AI to rapidly alert the lifeguard to the drowning child or deploy some sort of scuba robot flotation device that can get to the drowning person before a lifeguard to shave off precious second that can cause brain damage from deoxygenation.

A flotation device isn't enough, often a drowning person doesn't have enough awareness or body control to grab it. You need someone who can grab the victim and pull them out of the water.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#368

When I was 12, I went on a week long hike as a scout. We decided to swim across a lake, and 1/2 way through, I got tired, and tried swimming back, but couldn't. I remember having the presence of mind to yell out help before blanking out. My closest friend in the troop luckily turned around, swam back to and drug me back to shore. I was scared of the water after that, but some how ended up fighting my fear and earning…

A lake has caught me off guard once before. But as a fully grown adult. I jumped in to swim a distance I could comfortably swim in the sea, but the slightly lower buoyancy I had in the lake caught me completely off guard.

I was hundreds of meters from the shore when I finally admitted to myself I was exhausted.

Made it back fine, but made me much more cautious about swimming in fresh water.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#369

When I was 12, I went on a week long hike as a scout. We decided to swim across a lake, and 1/2 way through, I got tired, and tried swimming back, but couldn't. I remember having the presence of mind to yell out help before blanking out. My closest friend in the troop luckily turned around, swam back to and drug me back to shore. I was scared of the water after that, but some how ended up fighting my fear and earning…

My only take-away from this video is just how exhausting it is (to me as a non-lifeguard). It feels akin to driving on a busy roadway. Maybe you learn to size kids up, know better where to focus, who to keep track of, and what to look for. But still. Just going through four of those videos left me thankful it's not my primary responsibility. It did help.

I never did learn CPR. Maybe this is the year.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But. If we're observing as humans and it appears to us that the one creature is taking advantage of another, surely that's just our interpretation from a very limited understanding of their world? I have no idea where I'm going with this, but that phrasing still seems off to me.

Human behavior is no more complicated than that of anything else living. We just have more complicated ways to justify our actions.

And similar means to justify our distaste for some actions, as evidenced in this thread.
Post reply on HN