Don’t jump (here)!

don't jump off the high level bridge in edmontonDo you see these canted cantilevers dotting the west sidewalk of this here bridge, all the way from here to infinity, setting the stage for a million guitarsi  worth of wireii  running the length of the longest and tallest bridge in Edmonton ? Do you see the utter inadequacy of the existing four-foot-high steel mesh guardrails in preventing would-be suicidists from meeting their maker ? Can you appreciate just how bad the traffic jams are on this two-lane bridgeiii when a prima donna jumpers choose rush hour to make their spectacular escape from Foxconniv The Great White North ?

Obviously, suicides aren’t in and of themselves a fiscal cost to bear on society’s behalf. If anything, between catalysing the various and sundry activities of lawyers, insurers, and gravediggers ; reducing the future burden on the already stretched health care system (ie. disease industry) ; and providing potentially useful stressors to the surviving friends and family,v  suicide is actually +EV. And good for GDP !!! So other than the classically Apollonian, which is to say indignantly effeminate, perspective that “blood is bad mkay,” why all the huff ? What’s the big deal if a few lads and lassesvi want to say farewell from atop the High Level Bridge ?vii

Basically, because it looks bad.

So instead of risking what it can only fathom as bad press,viii the City of Edmonton is dropping a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport’s worth of tax dollars on chicken wire to show it cares, which is the exact same hill of beans that the dorks who think that “zero tolerance” policies mean anything whatsoever – as if cancerous cells were defeated by talking them into apoptosis. We tried!

Anyways, Second Best Korea’s Hat still has some learning to do in the public relations department, so much so that I’m quite prepared to take them on as a client.ix Y’know, whenever they’re ready to take the jump.

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P.S. If you’re actually considering suicide, take this test first, just to be sure.

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July 2016 progress report :
High Level Bridge - July 2016 suicide progress reportDecent little razerback for a 36DD eh ?
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  1. Not quite Brezhnev’s guitar though, is it ?
  2. Barbed wire ? For $3 mn+ (projected budget) it’d better be.
  3. In the way only self-important, “safety first” fucktards in the “civilised west” can, just as a four-lane highway would be reduced to a single lane for even the most innocuous fender bender, a jumper completely closes down this two-lane bridge, one of the primary arteries in the road network. Compare this with comparitively functional countries, like Brasil, where the police will push broken down cars through 500m long tunnels just to prevent a clog in traffic, or in Russia, where car accidents are a way of life, particularly when you tailgate the wrong motherfucker.
  4. Inb4 Edmonton City Council installs nets to catch those saddened souls determined enough to scale the guitar strings and take their final resting place the North Saskatchewan River.
  5. Isn’t it a bit odd that you only ever hear about PTSD and not PTG (Post-Traumatic Growth) ? Now why do you suppose that is ?

    Chew on this : what if “terrible” events were not something to be “surpassed” as a society – as if all the world’s monsters could be effectively squeezed under your bed ad infinitum without you ever running out of room – but what if “catastrophes” were in fact necessary for human development at both the individual and the group levels ; if not the least of all because such events separate the tricitum from the palea and leave a bit more Leibensraum for the members of the population who experience either neutral or convex payoffs (ie. display robustness or antifragility) as a result ? What then – what other priors would you need to reassess if this were indeed the case ?

  6. We’re only talking about a few here, folks. It may well be that there were more jumpers in 2015 than 2014 and more in 2014 than 2013, etc., but we can’t say with anything resembling statistical confidence that this is a meaningful increase, particularly given the city’s fluxuating population.
  7. For perspective, from a couple of survivors of Soviet totalitarianism no less, we hop into the log-mobile :

    assbot: More Swedes than ever are moving abroad – The Local … ( https://archive.is/TxxMs )
    asciilifeform: ‘However according to Solevid, there has been little detailed research on the specific reasons Swedes seek new lives abroad. “There is stunningly little knowledge of these people and why they move,” she said, adding that her team intended to investigate the issue.’
    asciilifeform: Ahahahaha. MEGA-MYSTERY!1111 Who could possibly guess why they move. Mendacious fucktards. (IIRC, Swedes – just like Finns – who move to Thailand, not only escape ‘Allah Snackbar’, but pay 0 tax, and can come back for socialist pension, health, etc. whenever they like…)

    mircea_popescu: Hahaha. and if “America” whatever that is would no longer be a populace opressed by “the rule of law”, everyone’d be very happy and could put down their weapons. So how about the simple message whatever anon politruk* needs to hear is, “go fucking hang, we won’t need weapons anymore.” Any chance of that ? Everyone employed by USG commits suicide over the weekend, usher paradise on earth ? Do your fucking part, eh!

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    *eg. “Every politruk you see – hoist him high into a tree.” (via alf):

    every politruk you see - hoist him high into a tree

    Failing to find a sufficiently capable political enemy, or a nice tall bridge, you can always tie a noose made out of bed sheets around your neck, with the other end securely fastened to the guardrail of your apartment balcony, and just hop over the edge. Timing will be important here because passerbys will want to help you down, thus leading to much embarrassment and many questions you’d rather not answer, so 4:00am is probably a pretty safe bet, barring too many hyper-vigilant light sleepers. But I’m sure you can think of something still more creative if you put your mind to it.

  8. God forbid the City takes a brief moment of solemn acknowledgement for the fallen before proceeding with its daily affairs as if nothing ever happened, recognising the honour of the deceased and nothing more, and slapping upside the head all the mouthy broads who miscalculate that it’s their place to opine on such matters. God forbid men die when they choose to die, propria manu, not when the statist apparatus deems it “appropriate.” That’d just be la-la-land, that’d just be old fashioned, that’d just be… the future.
  9. Between this, my previous defenses of civil liberty and my entreaty to revive a downtown homeless shelter, if you didn’t know any better you’d swear that I was turning into a regular advocate for the voiceless in this town. Nuts.

5 thoughts on “Don’t jump (here)!

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  4. […] High Level Bridge (yes, the one with those retarded “Don’t Jump Here” barriers) spans ~3.5x~ the length and was completed in the same amount of time as the new […]

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