Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The year I didn't survive

bessstillman.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 276 posts

Re: The year I didn't survive

#51

Post by eckesicle »

dottjt wrote: post #17

While not quite the same, my partner was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a few months ago, a few days after my daughter's 1st birthday. I think one thing I worry about is my daughter possibly not growing up with a mother. Like how that will affect her. It's been traumatic for myself personally, but it hasn't been ...I'm still highly functional and I'm still continuing to live life to the fullest.

My wife died suddenly when my son was two years old. He’s almost seven now.

So far, he’s completely fine without her. He claims he has memories of her, but I think he just remembers photos and videos that we’ve watched together. I don’t think he knows what he’s missing.

Re: The year I didn't survive

#53

Post by zmgsabst »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #49
zmgsabst wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t believe indirect costs actually fund research and accordingly see this as directing more money into important, life-saving research. From their perspective, the origin of this thread is someone using a tragedy to emotionally manipulate on behalf of bloated institutions and their administrations — and every bit as monstrous as you believe their views are. Perhaps even more so.

Bio research needs buildings. Electricity, heat, lights need to be on in those buildings and they need maintenance. Labs need equipment and often very specialized and expensive space. Not to mention someone needs to do accounting, payroll, taxes, immigration, maintenance, legal, ethics, etc. And all of these people need facilities, offices, computers, etc. Just like any corporation! These are indirect costs. You cann…

> What's going to happen if the government cuts off most indirect costs is that we're going to be forced to do research that can be covered by those costs.

The whole debate is whether 15% indirect costs is sufficient or whether it needs to be 30%+. Without a doubt universities are bloated and many don’t invest appropriately in their facilities — but where is the appropriate line?

Unfortunately, you didn’t add to that debate: you assumed the conclusion and then catastrophized based on your assumption. That exact style of argumentation is what makes people distrust that 30%+ really is needed — because nobody itemizes how, they just immediately resort to shaming and emotional manipulation.

> That means taking no risks, avoiding new data collection, not starting up anything radically new that might not have an immediate payoff, etc.

That’s compounded by all your personal examples of how this impacts you being direct costs — which have greater funding, with this change. And your claim that you can no longer do them dubious at best.

Re: The year I didn't survive

#55

Post by 0_____0 »

tombert wrote: post #10

It's weird how a series of big things happening in a short period of time changes who you are as a person, and not always for the better. When I failed to stop an acquaintance from killing himself a few years ago [1], it really fucked me up. I barely knew the guy, but I couldn't stop myself from feeling guilty over it, and I still have nightmares about it. It led to a severe funk of depression that I still haven't go…

Over the past decade I've come to the conclusion that there is no healing from some things. There will remain a pit in one's soul where something was torn out of it, and the only thing to do is build past it. Reroute around the damage.

I was someone's last phone call. I lost her when I was 16.

Re: The year I didn't survive

#56

Post by IgorPartola »

tombert wrote: post #35
beachtaxidriver wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read your original post and almost every reasonable person would have paused, but then have written it off as dark humor by someone they didn't know that well. The only reason you might think there were "signs" you should have caught now is because of what happened but no one could have known in advance. From a total Internet stranger, give yourself some grace. Or what I have also heard: Judge yourself the way you…

> The only reason you might think there were "signs" you should have caught now is because of what happened but no one could have known in advance. Not quite that simple. I remember sitting in my bed that night, wrestling with whether or not I should call the police or something, and I explicitly chose to do nothing because I didn't want him to think I was weird. Maybe my mind is blowing it up worse than it was, but…

One thing to also consider: generally speaking you likely had no chance in convincing him or saving him. It’s awful to feel powerless. I recently had a somewhat similar situation with a friend. I knew he was struggling. I was going to reach out to him the day he was found dead. It was under somewhat strange circumstances so it took a couple of months to get the report back on what the authorities thought happened, which turned out to be a spontaneous health issue and not any deliberate act. But when a healthy man in his 20s is found dead you rarely think “brain aneurysm” so I and other people in his life struggled to make sense of what happened.

One of the more helpful things I was told was that there is nothing you can do if someone is determined to end their life. No intervention, no amount of reaching out, nothing. And that is a powerless place to be but it also means that you not calling the police the night your acquaintance died is likely not the deciding factor in this case.

Find a way to forgive yourself. Talk about your experience. To friends, to strangers, to a therapist. EMDR is great, from what I hear but even talk therapy is a really good place to start processing. I hope you find a way out of this, one internet stranger to another.

Re: The year I didn't survive

#57

Post by bamboozled »

zmgsabst wrote: post #41
bamboozled wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really hard to comprehend, and what's more incredible is that people are "cheering" for this? What the actual hell is going on.

People don’t believe indirect costs actually fund research and accordingly see this as directing more money into important, life-saving research. From their perspective, the origin of this thread is someone using a tragedy to emotionally manipulate on behalf of bloated institutions and their administrations — and every bit as monstrous as you believe their views are. Perhaps even more so.

I call bullshit because as the other poster said, research will not happen in an island, there are much much less invasive ways to cut spending than what is happening.

I have a friend who is caught up in this and it is chaos.

Putting the fox in charge of the hen house is where it went wrong.

Re: The year I didn't survive

#58

Post by lux »

Sisyphean is the word I’ve come back to a lot myself since my wife took her life on November 6, 2024. Feeling like I’m now trying to live for both of us, grasping at ways of honouring her memory despite the incredible love we had being unable to “save” her, and somehow not at all myself anymore, but having to keep moving forward feels hopeless beyond belief.

I lost my dad suddenly just two months prior, and my grandma shortly before that, but the loss of your partner (and in this manner after she refused help and I watched helplessly as she spiralled in her last year) eclipses any grief or pain I had experienced before or could have even imagined.

But I wanted to show a little appreciation for the OP and others on here sharing their devastating losses. Knowing love inevitably turns into grief but that that is a more universal experience makes me feel a little less alone. Small blessings but at points like these, we take whatever morsels we can get.

Re: The year I didn't survive

#59

Post by metanonsense »

schneems wrote: post #24
tombert wrote: post #10

It's weird how a series of big things happening in a short period of time changes who you are as a person, and not always for the better. When I failed to stop an acquaintance from killing himself a few years ago [1], it really fucked me up. I barely knew the guy, but I couldn't stop myself from feeling guilty over it, and I still have nightmares about it. It led to a severe funk of depression that I still haven't go…

I’m sorry you went though that. I had a friend die by suicide. Shortly after I met him for the first time IRL. It messed me up. I’m sure you’ve heard it before but for the gallery, there’s the “in the moment” suicides where the thought comes and people act on it. If anyone feels that way, please call a hotline, it really is just a temporary feeling that will pass. Then there’s the “sick for a long time.” My therapist…

In my opinion, there’s also a third (and certainly controversial) option: suicide is the ultimate expression of freedom, self actualization, and human dignity. I don’t plan to kill myself in the foreseeable future, but the thought that I could gives me hope, power, and removes any fear from my life. A friend of mine is 94 and lives in constant, non-treatable pain, and the thought that she can end her life when she decides to do so makes things bearable for her.

I know that this ultimate freedom is also ultimate selfishness, because the loss is felt by your close ones, not you. But this makes me perhaps an asshole, but not sick.

Re: The year I didn't survive

#60

Post by kelnos »

zmgsabst wrote: post #53
light_hue_1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bio research needs buildings. Electricity, heat, lights need to be on in those buildings and they need maintenance. Labs need equipment and often very specialized and expensive space. Not to mention someone needs to do accounting, payroll, taxes, immigration, maintenance, legal, ethics, etc. And all of these people need facilities, offices, computers, etc. Just like any corporation! These are indirect costs. You cann…

> What's going to happen if the government cuts off most indirect costs is that we're going to be forced to do research that can be covered by those costs. The whole debate is whether 15% indirect costs is sufficient or whether it needs to be 30%+. Without a doubt universities are bloated and many don’t invest appropriately in their facilities — but where is the appropriate line? Unfortunately, you didn’t add to that…

This thinking is completely backward. If there is an established threshold, and you want to change it, it is on you to do the homework to determine that the lower threshold will be sufficient and won't cause harm. It's not the responsibility of the people currently doing research (the way they've done so for years) to justify the current threshold.
Post reply on HN