I'm feeling sad for humanity. "Selfie wrist" is a thing.
According to CBSNewYork, San Francisco doctor Levi Harrison is seeing a rise in an injury caused by "hyper-flexing your wrist inwards to capture the perfect selfie angle."
“Selfie wrist” can reportedly cause numbness and a tingling sensation that people feel in their fingers and wrists.
photo by Susanne Nilsson/Flickr Read the rest
On this day in 1966, Buzz Aldrin took the first selfie in space while standing on his seat and hanging out of an open hatch as part of the Gemini XII mission. From NASA:
Read the restThis “stand up” EVA (the first of three during the mission) was conducted with the hatch off while Aldrin stood on his seat, his upper body clear of the spacecraft. He completed his tasks with ease, including setting up an ultraviolet camera to image star fields, installing a movie camera, fixing a handrail, and retrieving a micrometeorite experiment. The flawless EVA lasted two hours and twenty minutes.
The second EVA, on November 13, was the real test of Aldrin’s extensive training. Attached to the spacecraft by an “umbilical” cord, he stepped out into space and began his work. The combination of underwater training, multiple restraints and handholds on both vehicles, and a new waist tether paid off: he was able to perform the needed tasks on both the Gemini XII and the GATV without a struggle. He rested periodically, which allowed him to recover between activities, and used the new restraints to position his body in diverse ways that weren’t possible on previous missions. The EVA was a resounding success.
For the final EVA, like the first one, Aldrin stood in his seat on the spacecraft. He discarded unneeded equipment and food containers, knowing they would eventually reenter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, and took pictures of stars. Altogether, Aldrin spent five and a half hours conducting the Gemini XII spacewalks.
Evan Greer writes, "Hey Internet -- it's election time, and shills for Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are going around telling our elected officials in Congress that no one cares about net neutrality anymore. They want our lawmakers to think they can just keep raking in campaign contributions and screwing over Internet users without any consequences. We need to prove them wrong. So we're flooding the Internet with short individual stories from voters who care about the free and open Internet. Can you add yours? Read the rest
For over 20 years, Santa Monica-based inventor Aaron Kramer has taken trash and turned it into art. His latest creation is a "Selfie Machine" which draws his portrait when he hand-cranks a knob. Should you want a "Selfie Machine" for yourself, Kramer sells custom ones starting at $10,000.
Junaid Ahmed takes 200 selfies a day, enough to land him on UK's Obsessed with my Body. Read the rest
Everyone loves sloths, and that has led to a huge black market in their capture for use in "safari selfies," where eco-tourists travel to exotic locales and pose for social media posts with local fauna. Read the rest
Hugo Cornellier took a selfie every day from the age of 12 until his recent wedding day. Why stop now though?
The Reaction GIF generator takes a brief video of you and spits out a GIF, thereby meeting your need for a brief animation of your confusion, dismay and horror to post in blog comments or on social networking platforms.
I don't have a webcam at the moment, but this particular GIF is uncannily like me every time I have the thought "I wonder what's going on on Twitter." Read the rest
Israeli author Shahak Shapira found a use for foolish and disrespectful selfies taken at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
A newly unveiled online project called “Yolocaust” delivers a stinging message for those who not only act disrespectfully at a Berlin Holocaust memorial but capture their behavior and share it with their friends on social media. The project, which debuted on Wednesday, was visited by so many Germans that the computer server hosting it crashed, according to reports in the German media, where it was covered with great interest.
You only live once, but we die twice: once when the body fails, the second when we are forgotten.
[Haaretz, via] Read the rest
Famed photographer Joseph Byron holds the camera for a few group selfies in 1920. No selfie stick. No duck face.
More info on these shots here and here. (via r/OldSchoolCool)
A man attempting to take a selfie with a python was bitten by the python, reports the Reuters news agency. "It attacked me," said the victim, one of a group of people manhandling the massive snake in hopes of getting a photo with it. Read the rest
Rangers in Saskatchewan have warned the public against attempting to take selfies with a moose that often swims in Wascana Lake.
Lake Moose appears to have wandered from its more remote usual habitat to take up residence near a suburban park frequented by humans. It hasn't done anything aggressive, and conservation experts want things to stay that way so they don't have to shoot it.
Read the restFacebook users began posting pictures of the moose swimming near Spruce Island, on the southwest side of the lake, around 10 a.m. Monday morning. Passersby stopped to watch the moose during its swim and some canoeists even got a close-up view as it approached the shore of Spruce Island.
Leko reported the moose still in the water as of late Monday afternoon. He said the moose will not be shot, unless it “goes into attack mode.” He said in the worst-case scenario the moose would be tranquilized and relocated to its natural habitat.
Hagaman Musson says: "So I was waiting for my son to come home from school and I see this woman trying to get a close up of the squirrel trying to get a selfie with it. Next thing I know he's chasing her down the street and she's rejecting the close up. Now she's in front of our house and the squirrel comes into view still chasing her. So now she's filming him screaming for him to get away. " Read the rest
The molten stuff in this 1996 Chernobyl photo was so radioactive that anyone standing three feet away from it would be dead in less than two minutes. According to Atlas Obscura, "the man in this photo, Artur Korneyev, has likely visited this area more than anyone else, and in doing so has been exposed to more radiation than almost anyone in history. Remarkably, he’s probably still alive. The story of how the United States got a hold of this singular photo of a human in the presence of this incredibly toxic material is itself fraught with mystery—almost as much as why someone would take what is essentially a selfie with a hunk of molten radiated lava." Read the rest
The most common way to die from taking a selfie is falling from a heights, followed by drowning.
From Priceonomics:
One-third of all people who met their demise in the midst of a selfie fell from heights — most commonly, a cliff or a building.
In late August of 2015, for example, a 25 year-old man Chinese man ventured off-trail to snap a selfie at the top of Long Men waterfall in eastern China. Distracted by the camera, he took a misstep and plunged 100 feet down into a ravine, where he died instantly. When authorities recovered his body several days later, his selfie stick-mounted phone — still intact — contained a picture of him in the process of falling.
The following month, a 17 year-old Russian student climbed a nine-story building near Moscow, and hung off the ledge to make it appear as if he were falling. He intended to capture the “ultimate” selfie for his Instagram page; instead, his hand slipped, and he fell to his death. Just weeks earlier, he’d posted a similar image of himself in a precarious position:
Всем ку, могла быть моей последней фоткой😊жаль что смазалась😢
Evan Griffin's dad borrowed his Gopro for a Vegas holiday and walked the strip for days with the camera on the end of a selfie-stick -- pointed the wrong way. Read the rest
Aanand Prasad knows how to take a decent selfie, and helped me take a better one too! Read the rest
