Kinda sorta copy/pasted question from Reddit. But wanted to see what your answers are like on here!
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuurwerkramp_in_Enschede
I live in this city. We were watching the fireworks depot burning from what we thougt was a safe distance…After the first explosion we knew we were waayyyy to close and left right away. Just minutes later the whole neighbourhood was gone.
There are vídeos on YouTube showing the disaster, it’s scary to watch really
One time in Hayward, CA my then-girlfriend and I were stalked through town by a tweaker in a big pickup truck, us in an old Mazda 3. All I did was accidentally make eye contact in the parking lot, sort of clocked the gearface and then minded my business but he took umbrage somehow. Probably chased us for a few miles through her old neighbourhood. I even tried a lame little fakeout with my turn signals, but neither that car nor my driving skills were up for a French Connection reenactment and I think he eventually gave up because chasing me was too pathetic. Bet he would have kicked my shit in, if I actually put up a fight.
Based on the Mazda 3 I’m a hell of a lot older but I grew up in Hayward, went to Moreau High School on Mission Blvd. Nice to see a rare mention of my old town online! Glad the weird dude who followed you gave up.
My wife went to Moreau too! She switched to Logan as soon as she could though, still keeps in touch with a friend or two though. I loved my time in Haystack.
If you ever find yourself in a situation like this, your best bet is to go to the police station, public library or major store chain. Go somewhere very public. At the very least never go home or anywhere in your usual rounds.
Dunno. It was probably an off duty cop.
Sometimes I find the level of bitterness on fediverse to be chilling… like holy shit some posters on here are legit wannabe murderers. And it seriously makes me question what I’m doing here.
I miss the internet being a more chill/nerdy space, but those days are long gone.
I agree, there’s a presence of bitterness and hostility in every online forum, and lemmy is no exception. That vibe makes me feel negative about the future sometimes, but you have to remember the fediverse and online forums in general are just subsets of the human race, not a good cross-section. People tend to gather around others who have similar attitudes.
What? I don’t see that being the case her. There are lots of really interesting stories you get from this kind of question
Interesting… the comment specifically says “fediverse” - but you’re not the only person who seems to assume it’s about this individual thread.
Because it’s in this thread. So clearly this thread triggered that thought. This isn’t a “what are your general issues with the fediverse”.
That means people’s stories about being followed were “clearly triggered” by thinking someone in this thread is following them, because the comments are in this thread - which makes no sense. The thread is about having scary gut feelings, not just having them offline.
Lost Lemming?
I read every comment ITT and I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I think they mean Lemmy as a whole: not this thread specifically.
Then go post that in a relevant thread; its just weird doing it out of the blue.
I completely agree. I’m not sure why I got downvoted for trying to clarify lol I don’t even agree with their opinion.
You got downvotes because you’re message adds cover for their stupid comment lol
Huh, I guess you could interpret my comment like that.
What are you on about?
Pause and think for a second. You’re asking that person to spill tea for you in order to take notice of something in your surroundings. Kind of a weird ass thing for people to get upset at having pointed out.
they are asking because it is baseless. nobody here wrote anything about murdering someone else
Why would they be talking about this thread? They were answering op’s question
okay. but I haven’t ever seen anything here like what they describe, and I read lemmy a lot
I have, it’s not like they get upvoted to the top of threads though. Some of them require following usernames post history over a period of time or browsing the mod log most instances have at the bottom of the browser window
yeah, I can understand that. I guess garbage people are everywhere
Think for a moment. Do you really want an answer to that question?
About 2 weeks ago, packing a few belongings and my cats into a car to evacuate from an impending flood. Didn’t know when I would be back home or what condition it would be in when I did.
Did your place end up flooding? Glad you took your lil homies with you
It did, about a foot of water inside my house. Lots destroyed. But we made it out and kitties are okay!
I was hiking with my buddy and felt a bit uneasy. Like my skin felt fuzzy, it was hard to explain. I yelled “Run!” To a friend, we ran down the mountain and dodged getting hit by lightning a few seconds later.
I was on a small hill when it started rumbling, we all felt the static in our hair. We quickly went down the hill.
I had a similar experience once. Lightning is crazy, man
Where did it strike then?
If I had to guess, about 50-75 feet from where we were standing.
Whew. Sounds loud as hell
Ironically, I don’t remember it being too loud. I do remember running down a mountain as fast as I could. I think I was just hyper focused on that though.
When its very close it just sounds like a snap. I think because it overloads the eardrums.
That would probably make sense. I genuinely remember it being loud, but not by hearing it, more of feeling it. You feel it in your lungs. My guess is due to the rapid pressure change. I was a bit too focused on getting off of the cliff/mountain we were at.
Unless it hits a tree, and the tree explodes. That happened to me last week right outside my house. I’ve never heard anything quite as loud nor with such a large thump in my body. Felt a bit like my bell got rung for the rest of the day.
Sounds possible. Memory can be weird like that
Where did it strike then?
the earth, somewhere ;-)
To me it felt like walking through invisible spiderwebs, strike was 50 feet away seconds later.
That’s a perfect description actually.
That fuzzy uneasy feeling was the static before a strike 😅
Correct. Although it feels definitely just static. It feels like you are touching pillow filling and static. It’s hard to describe.
You just got to play lightning rod.
People think lightning rods are meant to attract lightning, but that is incorrect. Buildings are often covered with a whole bunch of little 1 foot copper spikes. The idea is a multipoint spray of electrons from the ground up to a charged cloud to balance the charge and reduce the chance of a strike.
During a storm, you can sometimes hear them making a hissing sound as they work.
When lightning is about to strike, anything kind of tall and conductive will do the same. If you feel that static charge building up on you, get your ass as flat as you can. You cannot predict where the strike is going to hit, so running is silly–you might well run toward a strike. Just lay flat and stay away from tall stuff. Don’t be the tallest thing either.
I did get down when I felt it. I heard stories online of how lightning felt before it hit. I just never thought it would happen to me. We were almost at the top of the cliff. I stopped to take some pictures. So, when we got away. We decreased in elevation quickly, probably 15 feet in under 20 seconds? Then we got to the tree line.
I believe youre supposed to crouch with your feet pressed together and your arms wrapped around your knees. This reduces contact with the ground and pressing the feet together reduces risk of the charge going up one leg and down the other.
When you lay down you are increasing the potential of the strike from one end of your body to the other.
Correct. What you’re trying to do is make sure the strike doesn’t go through your heart where you will almost certainly die. Your body can survive a lot, as long as your major organs don’t get fried.
yeah, if i understand it right the majority of the damage from a lightning strike is that you get a burn where the bolt goes. if it goes through your heart, your heart gets one hell of a burn. then you have to heal a burn from the inside out, which your body is not used to doing
The burns are one part, but with the heat, it’s the electrical current you need to avoid, since it can not only stop your heat, but cause arrhythmia which can kill your hours later if you don’t get to a hospital.
I trust my spidey sense. When the hairs on the back of my neck go up and i get that feeling in my chest, i listen to it.
Its gotten me out of an armed store robbery, 2 ither street level robberies, 2 houses that just didnt feel right, multiple encounters with dangerous animals ( gators and 1 panther).
My wife just thinks im paranoid.
We get that feeling for a very good reason. It’s our intuition telling us something our instincts already know. Many people don’t get it and are conditioned into telling themselves “it’s probably nothing” because they don’t want to look silly in public. It can lead to paranoia, if you’ve been in enough hairy situations, but most of the time you’ll want to listen to that intuition and do something about it as soon as you get that feeling.
How many false positives for your spidey sense?
Dont know… i dont hang around long enough to find out.
2010 Loveparade. First we got told that there would be a different entry, which there wasn’t, which meant we needed to walk quite a while. On the way we had a few situations, where people pushed a lot and it’s not a nice feeling, when you have a considerable mass and you get pushed easily. We made it to the last big check and we where greeted with a clear view to the tunnel. At this point there weren’t big queues visible and it was just a short walk. I said to the 2 friends I was with, that NOW I want to go home. It was not a gut feeling or something, I just knew I don’t want to continue and I want to go home. One friend decided to stay, as we where this close and another agreed with me and left with me.
The friend who stayed, did cut his visit shorter, lucky for him. For people who don’t know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Parade_disaster It was one of the biggest crowd crushes disasters. 21 dead, 652 injured. It happend in that tunnel, which I looked into and decided to go home. That criminal trial is considered one of the most complex ones of the post war period. In 2020 they dropped the trial. The issue was for these crimes, they only had 10 years and they said due to the limitations of covid, they said they will run out of time.
Okay, now I’ve read about crowd crushes and am living in fear of groups of 3 or more people
The fascinating part for me is that sufficiently dense crowds of people (> ~5/m^2) exhibit behaviors similar to fluids
I was young and had just moved to a decent sized midwest city by myself. I didn’t know anyone so spent a lot of my time exploring by myself. There was a large park in a quiet area of town where it wasn’t unusual to be the only person around. I was sitting at the end of a very large rose garden when I noticed a tall skinny guy in a dirty wife beater and jeans standing on the outside of the garden with his dog. Something big like a Rottweiler or pitbull I don’t remember exactly. I just remember being super freaked out because he was just standing there looking directly at me.
I got up and started walking back to my car but he started walking parallel to me matching my pace. When I walked faster he did too. I got my phone and keys out and just kept walking as confidently as I could. I was parked a couple minutes away and over time his pace did slow slightly as mine got faster but I knew he was still behind me. I had a habit of unlocking my car several times with the keyfob because the car beep was satisfying. After I did so the white cargo type van parked next to me unlocked and beeped the exact same amount of times mine did.
At this point I as terrified. I backed out and raced out of the park without even looking behind me. I needed to pick up something from one of the neighborhood Walmarts on the way home so I stopped there and headed inside to calm down. The sun was still out and I’m a guy. I was young, short and slender but I still felt like that somehow protected me. I convinced myself I was being crazy and that guy just happened to be leaving the park when I did. I left the store and started walking to my car when I saw him. The white van was parked directly next to my car and he stood there at the back watching me. No dog this time. All I remember thinking is I had to get into my car because it was the only place I had any leverage. I slow motion got in, backed out, and headed back into a neighborhood where I knew I could zig zag my way around different blocks to try to lose him. I spent 10 minutes looking over my shoulder making random turns before I headed back to my apartment.
Never saw him again and to this day I still feel like I’m in a bit of denial about the whole thing. There were plenty of other cars in the parking lot. It was early evening. If he was trying to kidnap me it was a stupid place to do so. Perhaps he saw how scared I was at the park and just wanted to mess with me. Whatever the case I’ve never been so scared for my own life.
Your story reminded me of an incident I experienced a few years ago. I did grubhub in the evenings and would often hit a 7/11 on my way home for smokes. For context, this place was constantly busy with homeless people and bar-hoppers milling about outside, but they had never bothered me.
One night, a young man in mechanics coveralls approached as I was leaving and bummed a cigarette. As he was lighting it, he asked if I could give him a ride to the Walmart about a mile up the road because he was worn out from his long day. I declined, but he kept pushing. I finally told him I wouldn’t give rides to strangers without my husband along, and he backed off.
As I got into my car to leave, I noticed that this dude walked over to a car parked at the next business over, immediately hopped into the passenger seat and turned to talk to someone in the back. I couldn’t clearly see through their tinted windows to count heads, but I think there were at least 2 other people in the car. I high-tailed it out of there and took the long way home. I suspect it was a setup for a carjacking at best.
Always listen to your gut instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.
Edit: redundancy
I’m surprised you actually got in your care at Walmart with the van right next to it. I probably would have gone back inside and asked a security guard to come out with me.
I was young and dumb and had just finished gaslighting myself into thinking that I was being dramatic. It never crossed my mind.
If this ever happens again, or for anyone reading this, the best thing to do if you’re being trailed in a car is to drive to a police station. (Despite the other dangers that can also cause unfortunately)
Does anyone else find it odd that a lot of day old accounts make their first post here specifically, or is that just a coincidence?
If they post interesting stuff, who cares?
Reddit is very interesting, yeah.
Could be a lot of lurkers finally found something worth posting too.
…or as history has taught me, BOTS
We need to leave … now.
Well just about every askreddit post I’ve made was removed and then reposted by a mod. I can see why people would want to try here.
that’s not a bad idea, though
askreddit so overmoderated by the sub filters and reddit AI.
There was a pretty noticeable moment a few years ago when lemmy seemed to spring to life with activity. Mainly those screenshot posts from other social media or those newer image macro things. I’m 99% sure that’s when somebody turned on bots to make lemmy look more lively.
More autistic/anti-social scary but went to a sort of extra class in uni. Normal lectures have ~150 people in the lecture hall and seemed like almost all of them were squeezed into this tiny lab meant for ~20. I was a step into the room when I seen how packed it was so I turned on my heel and left. I think I might have even said “Fuck that” out loud as did.
I can still sort of smell all the exhaled air dankly hanging around the room after it mingled with ~150 pairs of lungs and passed through unbrushed teeth.
20 yrs ago…
Driving through upstate new york with my family. Passed through a small town looking for some food and/or gas.
One house had nazi banners hanging openly on the front of the house. Not flags, they were like those big vertical banners behind hitler during speeches.
Nope. We can hold our pee and get gas later… drive a little faster and get out.
As a canadian, i was shocked… i thought stuff like that only existed in the deep south… we were 3hrs from the canadian border or something.
In hindsight, it explains a lot about the current state of affairs in the US
1 downvote is the house owner
In upstate New York one of my college friends borrowed my car and was driving around with it. My car had a Norwegian flag decoration on it and some guy pumping gas at a gas station mistook it for the Confederate flag, pointed at it and said, “yeah the South will rise again!!!” while my (Asian…) friend was also filling up. When she got back she had a lot of questions for me about what kind of flag it was since she wasn’t familiar with the Norwegian one.
Never ever seen a Nazi flag in person and I’ve lived in the Deep South for about a decade. Confederate ones are super common though, albeit less so than just a few years back.
A New Yorker so dumb he doesn’t even know NY wasn’t part of the confederacy.
And remember, those are just the dumbest handful of them.
Well I’m not entirely surprised. Rural areas just tend to lean right. Even in a wider region that is more liberal like California and New York, their rural parts are more right leaning.
Driving out west in Canada from the prairies to see the ocean years ago. Went through Golden, BC and decided to go into the town proper for a dinner, rather than the roadside chains. It was about 6:10 PM. When we walked in there were about twenty locals who immediately all went quiet when we walked in. We grabbed a table and proceeded to get stared at by the whole room. I nodded at a few with no response. My wife looked terribly uncomfortable. We got up, apologized to the waitress and got the hell out of dodge. Even looking back years later I am still weirded out by that scene. I’m sure that, if we stayed, we would’ve wound up in some sort of Stephen King short story.
Is that like the Canadian version of a Sundown town?
any idea what the cause was?
Could be something as simple as discomfort due to road strangers coming in or, we may have interrupted the start of some sort of ritual sacrifice. 😁
I’ve had something similar happen. Old school mom n pop diner type of restaurant in a “big suburb” level city, sorta “local famous” kind of place, had seen cars with their bumper stickers around town for years, figured we’d try it one day just for shits and grins. The feeling was not bad enough to leave, we went ahead and ate and paid and left. But definitely had the feeling that we were being, not necessarily watched overtly, but they were keeping an eye on us. Everyone. Wait staff, other customers. No idea why. The whole time just vaguely uncomfortable feeling that you can’t really put your finger on. After we left, my wife and I both at pretty much the same time were like “ok that was creepy right?”
Stephen King was what I thought of too. Specifically the scene in (I think) one of the Dark Tower books where they go into the restaurant that is owned by vampires or whatever they were.
Was about to get robbed
Go on, let’s hear it
Rise of the Nazis part deux
I like Eddie Murphy’s attitude on haunted houses: “If I went in a house and a voice came out of the walls and said, GET OUT - I would Get. the Fuck. Out.”
Fuck that noise. My house, my rules, if they want to stay they can pay rent and do the wash.
