A 51 year old father of two has just become the 24th suicide in 18 months at France Telecom, also known as Orange. Apparently, it had something to do with conditions at work, but France Telecom's CFO is punting a different theory.
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth on Sep 29, 2009 - 86 comments

Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. Wired's David Kushner examines the work of two young, competitive AI researchers, and the eerie circumstances of their deaths.
posted by knave on Sep 15, 2009 - 48 comments

I was shot in the head two years ago. I was in prison for six years. I live in a Taliban hub. I need to be an amputee. I'm four. I'm six. I'm eight. I have a micropenis. I've had sex both with and without a foreskin. My sister and I are in love. I'm in love with my mother. I married and had a daughter with my first cousin. I love my dog. I have killed someone while driving drunk. I have superpowers from chemotherapy. I was in a cult for seven years. I own a woman. I used to be asexual (I am still asexual). I was in porn (and I'm still in porn). I took a boy's virginity. I am killing myself in a few months. [more inside]
posted by WCityMike on Aug 30, 2009 - 125 comments

Alan Turing , one of the men responsible for computers as we know them today, was persecuted by the British government for being a homosexual. [more inside]
posted by idiopath on Aug 19, 2009 - 209 comments

How Baida Wanted to Die [more inside]
posted by zinfandel on Aug 15, 2009 - 45 comments

Terry Pratchett: I'll die before the endgame
posted by Artw on Aug 3, 2009 - 74 comments

Alan Vega live... It's not Billy Idol, Elvis, or Springsteen, its just Alan Vega and "Its called Wipeout...why don't you shut up"
posted by celerystick on Jun 1, 2009 - 34 comments

Former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide on May 23. The former president jumped from a cliff in his hometown, where he had retired to. A country mourns (video and articles 1, 2), and clashes (more, WSJ), over the legacy of the former human rights attorney who fought for the rights of student protesters and against the corrupt presidencies of the 80s, had his presidency saved by protests and activism in the electronic age, and at the end of his life found himself being investigated for bribery. [more inside]
posted by kkokkodalk on May 28, 2009 - 25 comments

Lai Jiansheng was fed up with a suicide jumper in the Chinese provence of Guangzhou that was blocking traffic, so he climbed up to where Chen Fuchao was and gave him a push onto an air mattress. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla on May 24, 2009 - 63 comments

A Japanese study finds a link between lower suicide rates and traces of lithium in the drinking water. While the study's findings are "intriguing", external relations director Sophie Corlett of Mind warns that lithium is toxic, and that further research is needed.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on May 1, 2009 - 17 comments

Homophobia is still a bully's deadliest weapon.
posted by hermitosis on Apr 25, 2009 - 205 comments

Wednesday, a woman jumped from the top tier of the Queens Center Mall, leaving by the railing a distraught companion, her purse, and her shoes. At first glance it would seem a spontaneous, strange thing to do, but it was most likely a premeditated action to show her intent. Workers on the Golden Gate Bridge use shoes as a clue of somebody about to jump, and Japan has long known that people who end their life leave their shoes behind. Age has little to do with it, and method seems irrelevant, so the common bond seems to be that taking off your shoes is the second-to-the-last decision some people make in their lives.
posted by AzraelBrown on Apr 10, 2009 - 125 comments

Four Dead in High School Massacre "Mentor high school officials confirmed that a girl and two other boys" in addition to Eric Mohat, died. "'We don't believe it's a problem,'" Justin Maynor, communications director for the Mentor Public School District, told ABCNews.com. [more inside]
posted by orthogonality on Apr 3, 2009 - 139 comments

"The war has uprooted 4.7 million people from their homes. So where are they?" With the election of Obama and the economic crisis, the topic of Iraq has fallen by the wayside. As hard as things may be right now, Iraqis have been going through far worse for years now. If you're curious about what they have to say, hear them tell it in their own words. Iraqi Refugee Stories. [more inside]
posted by wander on Mar 23, 2009 - 16 comments

Nicholas Hughes has taken his own life. A marine biologist specializing in Alaskan stream fish, he has been preceded in death by his mother, Sylvia and his father, Ted.
posted by felix betachat on Mar 22, 2009 - 49 comments

Do you know how to make a frog drunk? I bet you don't. But I do. I fired my pot up one morning and got it going real good. It had just started running high shots. That is what you call it when it first starts to come out. For so many jugs, then it turns to backins. Anyway here come hopping up to the still a damn big frog. I thought to myself ol' boy I'll make you drunk as hell.
Legendary Appalachian moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton was arrested by the ATF in March 2008 [PDF]. At his arrest, agents found guns, three 1000-gallon stills, hundreds of gallons of sour mash, and over 800 gallons of white lightning. This week at 61 years old, and faced with 18 months in prison, he committed suicide.
posted by Who_Am_I on Mar 19, 2009 - 84 comments

South Korea has one of the world's highest suicide rates (previously). The phenomenon has been acute in the entertainment world. In the past two years, over ten Korean celebrities (mostly actors, actresses, and singers) have taken their own lives. Most of them were under 30. The latest death was that of 26 year-old actress Jang Ja-yeon, star of the popular comedy-drama "Boys Over Flowers." Initial reports stated that Jang's death was yet another in a tragic line of Korean celebrities succumbing to depression due to the pressures of stardom and (according to one foreign commenter) the inability to "admit that there is a lot of intense depression and mental illness in Korea." But there's also an emerging twist in Jang's death. Her suicide note has been found, and it turns out that her death wasn't due to relative intangibles of depression and mental illness. In fact, she was allegedly being beaten and raped by various higher-ups in the Korean entertainment business, and the names of the guilty are beginning to come out (one of whom has apparently fled to Japan).
posted by bardic on Mar 15, 2009 - 39 comments

Army reports highest rate of soldier suicides for three decades in 2008. [more inside]
posted by batmonkey on Jan 29, 2009 - 20 comments

We had a discussion a couple months ago about VW stock. Betting against VW cost Adolf Merckle hundreds of millions of dollars last year and eventually destroyed his business empire. Yesterday, it cost him his life.
posted by joaquim on Jan 6, 2009 - 64 comments

How to best show your love if you're a rockabilly singer in the 50's? First, claim you might cry. Or die. Or commit suicide. If that doesn't work, you can threaten her vaguely, threaten her with a baseball bat, or even threaten her with death. Oh, you're female? Try the gun/sex metaphor (NSFW images) or just go hog wild and claim you'll blow his head off with nitro. Touched on previously. [more inside]
posted by andihazelwood on Dec 12, 2008 - 15 comments

Medical studies have indicated that high intelligence is often synonymous with the likelihood of alcoholism and suicidal tendencies. Animal studies have suggested that being smarter can actually be bad for animals...and it's not always an advantage for humans either. There should be a point here, but I'm a little fuzzy on what it is.
posted by deusdiabolus on Dec 9, 2008 - 85 comments

Have you seen the new ads for Diet Pepsi Max? Reactions have not been kind. Some are comparing it to The Book of Bunny Suicides. The images in the Pepsi links are the same, the comments are not. [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen on Dec 3, 2008 - 59 comments

Lori Drew has been found not guilty on felony charges. However, she was found guilty on three misdemeanor counts. (Previously: 1, 2)
posted by Kimothy on Nov 26, 2008 - 55 comments

19-Year-Old Commits Suicide on Justin.TV. [previously.]
posted by chunking express on Nov 21, 2008 - 128 comments

Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" YT Link is the duo of Alan Vega and Martin Rev at their most anthemic and uplifting, a different side of their confrontational synth-punk. Bruce Springsteen closed his shows on the 2005 Devils & Dust tour with a fantastic solo cover of "Dream Baby Dream," and is sharing a new split 10" with the NYC electronic pioneers themselves.
posted by porn in the woods on Nov 15, 2008 - 18 comments

What killed Sgt. Gray? "He survived the war only to die at home. An exploration of his death and his combat unit's activities reveals what can happen to soldiers who feel the freedom -- or the pressure -- to do things in war they can't live with later." -- An American Radioworks documentary.
posted by empath on Nov 11, 2008 - 29 comments

Time to play The Game. A Flash Monday tour of the absurd.
posted by Happy Dave on Nov 10, 2008 - 19 comments

Transcripts of a troubled mind tells the life and times of Breece D'J Pancake, a brilliant young writer from South Charleston, West Virginia. In a raw, stripped down style, much of his work focused on the people and the language of the Appalachia He committed suicide at the age of 29 and left behind a small, but powerful collection of stories
posted by scarello on Nov 7, 2008 - 22 comments

The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace, Rolling Stone (warning: long article; could make you cry)
posted by Baldons on Nov 1, 2008 - 70 comments

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about. First reported by an anonymous tip to a blog, the Los Angeles Times has confirmed that David Foster Wallace has hung himself.
posted by gerryblog on Sep 13, 2008 - 483 comments

The Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez On January 14th, 1996, A 21-year old Floridian man named Ricardo Lopez began a video diary to record his own growing obsession with Bjork. [more inside]
posted by grippycat on Sep 6, 2008 - 23 comments

A Good Poop is an entertaining blog by an occupational and environmental health student who enjoys finding oddities in medical and scientific research from PubMed. (via Look at This...)
posted by madamjujujive on Aug 20, 2008 - 42 comments

Battlemind: Armor for Your Mind is a U.S. Army website designed to help, in part, families deal with deployment, including a series of cartoons and videos intended for children whose parents may be sent to or be returning from warzones. Part of the Army's Behavioral Health program, these give intriguing insight into military culture. [more inside]
posted by Rumple on Jul 29, 2008 - 6 comments

Last Year I Killed A Man , by Vaughan Thomas. Published Saturday July 19, 2008 by The Guardian.
posted by ZachsMind on Jul 20, 2008 - 117 comments

Now, here's something you don't see every day. I found it unlikely, but perhaps he was a copycat suicide. [more inside]
posted by an egg on Jul 16, 2008 - 80 comments

For the former U.S. marine Michael Elliott the psychological impact of war is the latest and most challenging battle. Private Joseph Dwyer survived rocket-propelled grenades and shocking violence, made his way back to his family and friends, but couldn't escape the “demons” that followed him home. Experts say up to 30% of returning soldiers will require psychiatric help: a number not seen since the end of the Vietnam War. Today 60% of war veterans suffering from PTSD don't receive any help at all.
posted by Surfin' Bird on Jul 16, 2008 - 18 comments

In a 2001 University of Houston study of 153 survivors of nearly lethal attempts between the ages of 13 and 34, only 13 percent reported having contemplated their act for eight hours or longer. To the contrary, 70 percent set the interval between deciding to kill themselves and acting at less than an hour, including an astonishing 24 percent who pegged the interval at less than five minutes.

30 years ago today, Frank Stanford, a young Arkansaw poet shot himself three times in the heart with a 22-caliber pistol. He was 29. By then he had become a powerful and unique voice in the American poetry landscape, dubbed "a swamprat Rimbaud" by Lorenzo Thomas and "one of the great voices of death" by Franz Wright. He left behind a strong (though often hard to find and/or unrecognized) body of work, most notably his immense epic The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, a 15,280 line poem with no punctuation or stanzas. [more inside]
posted by troubles on Jun 3, 2008 - 44 comments

PTSD: The War Within. A Marine writes about his PTSD experience. This article from the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette was written by USMC Staff Sergeant Travis N. Twiggs. Twiggs killed himself and his brother after a long police chase in Arizona earlier this week.
posted by homunculus on May 17, 2008 - 66 comments

Lori Drew was charged today for her involvement in the MySpace-related suicide of Megan Meier last fall.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow on May 15, 2008 - 132 comments

Suicide by robot.
posted by jbickers on Mar 21, 2008 - 46 comments

"I'm going to kill myself in 90 days." A blogger calling herself "Jane" sets up a blog to chronicle her final 90 days, and is calling on the internet for suggestions on how to do it. Disturbed blogger? Or another "viral campaign" for something soon to be revealed? [more inside]
posted by revmitcz on Feb 10, 2008 - 291 comments

Prison and the Mentally Ill in Massachusetts: The Globe reports on the pitfalls and consequences of using a retribution-based correctional system on the criminally insane in MA, as inmates in the state kill themselves at triple the national rate. Part I. Part II. Part III (in tomorrow's Globe). Photos of the system's most troubled. Last words of some disturbed inmates. [more inside]
posted by rollbiz on Dec 10, 2007 - 92 comments

"'It's been a magical evening,' Joel says as the Great Khali hits the Undertaker with a dustbin lid." Jon Ronson (and son) journey into the world of WWE to investigate the death of Chris Benoit.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Dec 8, 2007 - 18 comments

The Greater Internet F***wad theory is funny, right? Wrong.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste on Nov 12, 2007 - 275 comments

The Rev Dr Chad Varah, founder of the samaritans (which also runs befrienders worldwide), has died. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia on Nov 8, 2007 - 8 comments

Robin Prosser was a former concert pianist and systems analyst who suffered from an autoimmune disease similar to lupus for over 20 years. The disease left her in constant pain and made her allergic to most pharmaceutical painkillers. Only medical marijuana brought her relief, but last spring the DEA seized her medicine. Unable to cope with the chronic pain any longer, she committed suicide on October 18th. [Via Andrew Sullivan.]
posted by homunculus on Oct 29, 2007 - 68 comments

Why is anonymous group suicide so popular in Japan? From 2003 through 2005, 180 people died in 61 reported cases of Internet-assisted group suicide in Japan . . . All but two of these cases have proceeded according to a common blueprint: The victims meet online, using anonymous screen names, and then take sleeping pills and use briquettes, charcoal burners, and tape to turn a car or van into a mobile gas chamber.
posted by jason's_planet on Oct 10, 2007 - 33 comments

Even Astronauts Commit Suicide. Former Navy doctor, astronaut and Space Shuttle mission specialist, ham radio operator, and one time flight surgeon of The Blue Angels, Dr. Chuck Brady, was denied a hip replacement by the Navy shortly before he took his own life in July, 2006, and, according to his friend Dr. Ed Drum, this was a pivotal point in the depression that led Dr. Brady to apparently take his own life. [more inside]
posted by paulsc on Sep 20, 2007 - 35 comments

What do James Stockdale, Drew Carey, Mike Wallace and Nadia Comaneci have in common? They, along with a long list of others, have all, at one time or other, believed suicide was the only answer to their various problems.
posted by Oriole Adams on Sep 5, 2007 - 76 comments