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Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

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Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#491

Post by awj »

Aga wrote: post #439
tbrooks wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter whether its a non-profit or for-profit, charity or business, or whether pg personally benefits from Watsi flourishing. He's using the events in Boston as a way to promote a service that has nothing to do with the horror occurring in Boston. I'm not saying Watsi isn't great -- it is. But this isn't the time or place to call attention to Watsi. It's tasteless and rude.

I like the practicalness of the advice. It might actually lead to some good in this world. It's times like this when people stop to think about other human beings and might actually act on something. Unfortunately during normal times we are really bad at that.

I also like the practicalness of the advice, but it feels rather crass coming from someone deeply involved in Watsi. Good intentions or not, using a horrible event to promote something else altogether while the event is still happening is in terribly bad taste.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#492

Post by tomkarlo »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #45
yessuccess wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random person with mental problems? Like all of the other shootings, stabbings, etc that have occurred in the last 10 years.

But it is so professional. Two explosions, within seconds of each other. And these were decently powerful too considering they had to be small enough to hide in the crowds. You might be right, but something about this just makes me thing /organised./

Not sure how it seems professional. Compare it to the London bus bombings or Madrid, and it seems much more haphazard. For one thing, had it happened about two hours before, there was a much larger national / international audience when the winners were finishing.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#493

Post by andypants »

anigbrowl wrote: post #372
ricardobeat wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it looks like they didn't really know what to do at this moment. What is the standard police procedure?

This is mere seconds after the explosion took place, with the smoke still drifting through the air. Already they've made it to the side of the most obvious casualty; I can't really see the basis for your comment.

They are all facing away from the explosion. The first explosion happened on the side with the flags, you can see the smoke is thickest there.

Just pointing out an observation. There could be other officers already on the scene of the explosion, and these guys are handling the crowds.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#494

Post by Killswitch »

callahad wrote: post #350
Killswitch wrote: post #4

Crazy people.. Another image [NSFW]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BH6fwFvCUAA-PWb.jpg:large

FWIW, watch out for the Бостоне ("Boston" in Russian/Cyrillic) trending topic on Twitter. There's at least one extremely graphic photo of a gentleman who has lost the majority of his left leg. After seeing that, I'm opting to avoid further photos.

Yeah I posted it as a reply to this too, but retracted it after realizing it was just way to gruesome.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#495

Post by ollysb »

zalew wrote: post #66
austenallred wrote: post #47

While this is buggy/not ready for release, here's a way to follow this on social media. http://fastlane.grasswire.com/ PS. Here's our launchrock page if anyone cares http://grasswire.com

if it's yours: nice, but consider refresh rate of 'media' a bit lower. I can't read the captions before it's pushed down.

Would be great if mouseover froze the lane underneath. For bonus points you could continue to load new tweets but add them above the screen.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#496

Post by andypants »

spitx wrote: post #434

Person walking on roof of a building near the site of the incident at the time of explosions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQJsyqAOofg

I keep seeing this get posted all over the place. People want to spread this photo for some reason.

It's a fucking silhouette made up of 20 pixels. It's a person on a roof who was likely watching the event. People are so desperate for somebody to blame, this is just ridiculous.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#498

Post by PeterisP »

intopieces wrote: post #473
PeterisP wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies, that was biased, and I have no idea about the ethnicity of the victims. Perhaps "people from wealthy english-speaking countries" would be more accurate? I struggle to find any other significant differences between this incident and, for example, the terror-murder of 7 people in Mexico ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandt... ) or the 6000 last month victims in Syria that will get m…

>The only difference in value of people lives to global media seems to be their country of residence. Now THAT is politically motivated. Comments like this sound like an attempt to co-opt or subjegate the empathy that arises in humans when they read about the suffering of their own people. It's sort of sad, really, that you can't let us reflect on a tragedy.

Reflecting on tragedies is useful and necessary. We, the whole world, will reflect on this tragedy a lot.

But the political issue (problem?) is that with the current media globalization right now all the non-US media and non-US audiences are overtaken with this incident and they will not be reflecting on the many larger tragedies regionally, globally, anywhere else. As always. While the world mourns for Bostonians, there are today 10 times more victims in a bigger terror bombing elsewhere (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22149863) - will there be global empathy for that? Tomorrow, world leaders will call for action due to the Boston bombing - will they call for action on middle east bombings?

Currently random media outlets in, say, Russia or South America tend to report a shooting in USA while ignoring a genocide in Africa. Empathy in media is already distorted, and I've no idea on how to get it back.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#499

Post by Wintamute »

uberuberuber wrote: post #475

In the sturm und drang that has resulted from this tragedy, and the weeks to come of hand wringing about terrorists/crazyfolk/etc across the major news networks, I hope against hope that we can stow our reptilian brains for a brief while… In the 3 hours that have passed since the top comment was made, 205 people in the US have died from heart disease(1), an almost entirely preventable disease. This observation may be…

Well said.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#500

Post by joelrunyon »

youngerdryas wrote: post #401
tbrooks wrote: post #379

Really PG? https://twitter.com/paulg/status/323909260826259457

Just a little too soon after, only a couple hours, combined with confusion over for-profit status makes it look tone deaf but it is really not. People are suffering - help suffering people.

I don't see how this is a bad thing - related to YC or not.

It's a practical way to have people go from feeling helpless to actually helping people who need it (whether they'll be covered by the lastest media cycle or not).

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