R.I.P. The thread of death....celebrity or otherwise

[McNutt]

Are we at a point where there are just too many threads popping up that we need to create more subforums? I don't think so, but I'm the one that thinks we have too few threads.

[Rumpy]

I wouldn't want a separate subforum. I was on a forum once that did that (a celebrity death subforum) , and in all honesty, it felt morbid. Notices are fine, but more than that and it feels like we put more attention on it than is needed.

[Sudy]

I don't think we need a designated R.I.P. forum, is anyone legitimately campaigning for this? It's a ridiculous idea. People just need to be aware that anyone's free to create their own designated R.I.P. thread if they're so inclined, and any earnest complaints about such solo threads, if they happen, need to stop. But I think this is less of an actual problem than a topic of casual debate that occasionally arises that no one really cares that much about.

But even if the community has survived through years of our present layout, I think discussion of how we could improve it to better facilitate participation is warranted. I think a forum for non-gaming media would be a great idea. (TV, movies, music, books, etc.) The intention isn't to have Isg post an empty thread for each new release, but to expand out a lot of that stuff that gets lost in the "what are you watching/listening to/Netflix shows/etc." threads. It wouldn't answer the "what deservers its own thread?" question; that is, as always, up to the individual poster.

Though this problem still exists in Video Games. We have a catch-all gaming thread that often expands into broader discussion about a game/series/genre, but no one bothers to move it to a dedicated thread. Which is fine. But some of us avoid these threads because it's just too hard to follow the conversation. Or maybe I have a little thing to share that truly isn't worthy of its own thread, but I feel like I'd be interrupting a two-page conversation about the state of ARPGs so I don't post it.

This is all just the nature of discussion in a fairly unstructured, unpoliced environment though. Which I think is what most of us want, and I think few care to do anything different at this point. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to make innocuous changes that better encourage participation and facilitate the easy location of earlier discussions on a topic, though.

[Blackhawk]

This seems to come up a lot.

If you think someone deserves their own thread, they deserve it. It's about what they meant to you, or what significance you think they had. We don't need formal rules because we have civility and most of us have known each other, no matter how superficially, for years if not decades.

This is the way. Funerals are not for the dead, and are not a reflection of the dead. Funerals are for the living, and likewise memorials. We have a place to comment when someone dies, but every once in a while someone sees someone who was important to them die and wants to set up what amounts to a memorial to that person. That's not a slight on everyone else, it's just that one person expressing themselves in honor (or dishonor) of someone significant to them personally.

I think that a lot of the mentality of "use the meta-thread" and "find an existing thread rather than making a new one" is mostly an outdated throwback to the early days of OO (and late GG), when a popular section like PC Games by Title (remember that?) or Everything But Gaming got so many posts that people could post something, and it would be on page 3 before most people ever saw it. It really came to a head with Morrowind, when people started a racket in the Meta forum about how many threads we had on it. People would start separate threads for each and every question, resulting in whole walls of nothing but Morrowind posts, pushing every other topic into oblivion (which was oddly appropriate...) We currently have 107 separate threads about Morrowind.

Anyway, it became sort of a sore spot/stigma for a while that making a separate thread for a minor twist on a topic was thoughtless.

It's been almost 20 years. It now takes 2-3 weeks for a post in Video Games to be pushed off of the front page. And remember, back then, Video Games was actually four and a half separate forums (PC Games by Title, Unreleased Games, Multiplayer, Consoles, and half of PC Gaming in General), so right now, we're probably going through threads at 1/20th of the speed we were back then. It's no longer beneficial to have everything in one thread - we don't need to spare the posts anymore. In fact, it would probably be much more beneficial to OO as a whole if we used them less, as it would make us look at lot less dead, having some forums with only two or three active threads over entire days.

If we want to make a drive against catch-all threads, the community has the ability to do that. Just... create new threads for topics that you think warrant more in-depth/isolated discussion. Blackhawk for example does this all the time. As mentioned, within reason I don't think we have to worry about the forum being flooded with superfluous content. But please, use clear subjects and update them as needed (or if the original poster is no longer active, create a continuation thread).

Exactly that. If you want to discuss something that's likely to be more than a half a dozen posts, give it it's own thread if you want. It also makes it a lot easier to follow along (since there aren't three overlapping conversations), and makes it much easier to go back and read up on a particular game or movie if they're not all mixed into the same thread, Discord-style.

[Blackhawk]

We have a place to comment when someone dies, but every once in a while someone sees someone who was important to them die and wants to set up what amounts to a memorial to that person.

As an afterthought, I'd also frown on shaming someone for offering their respects to someone that they admired. It's just a thread.

[Smoove_B]

As an afterthought, I'd also frown on shaming someone for offering their respects to someone that they admired. It's just a thread.

It's a good rule to follow on forums / social media overall. Contribute if you're motivated; ignore if you're not interested.

EDIT: Case in point, just yesterday someone (elsewhere) was asking about a snowblower and how to get it started because of the snowstorm hitting our area today and tomorrow. They'd asked a pretty basic question and someone posted a sarcastic response, inferring they were a moron for asking it. Well, as it turns out, the OP's husband recently died and she was trying to figure out how to deal with something she'd never considered before and had also lost track of during her grief.

EDIT The REVENGE: I'm more bothered that people wouldn't start new forum topics than I'd be bothered that we have 37 new topics posted (broadly) about the same thing (like Starfield, to give a modern example). We're a dying breed here and at some point there will be a magic number where heat-death finally occurs because there's no activity.

[LordMortis]

As an afterthought, I'd also frown on shaming someone for offering their respects to someone that they admired. It's just a thread.

It's a good rule to follow on forums / social media overall. Contribute if you're motivated; ignore if you're not interested.

EDIT: Case in point, just yesterday someone (elsewhere) was asking about a snowblower and how to get it started because of the snowstorm hitting our area today and tomorrow. They'd asked a pretty basic question and someone posted a sarcastic response, inferring they were a moron for asking it. Well, as it turns out, the OP's husband recently died and she was trying to figure out how to deal with something she'd never considered before and had also lost track of during her grief.

EDIT The REVENGE: I'm more bothered that people wouldn't start new forum topics than I'd be bothered that we have 37 new topics posted (broadly) about the same thing (like Starfield, to give a modern example). We're a dying breed here and at some point there will be a magic number where heat-death finally occurs because there's no activity.

The original edit is the sort of "I simply don't have the awareness" I strive for. I fail all too often.

I suspect funding or the will to upkeep will die will stop before activity drops approaches nothing. Though I don't doubt we'll become the old people sitting on porch telling the same jokes and stories as we continue to drop in numbers/desire to be active.

[Blackhawk]

EDIT The REVENGE: I'm more bothered that people wouldn't start new forum topics than I'd be bothered that we have 37 new topics posted (broadly) about the same thing (like Starfield, to give a modern example). We're a dying breed here and at some point there will be a magic number where heat-death finally occurs because there's no activity.

A page full of active topics is more likely to draw in new blood than a single topic with 1,000 pages.

It's still not going to fully revitalize us, but it might slow down our decline.

[Smoove_B]

That's true but would you join a forum that is actively discussing death in 10+ different daily threads?

[Daehawk]

Everythingbutdeath thread coming up....

[Zarathud]

If you have a lot to say, then a death deserves its own thread. If you just want to note the deceased in a drive-by post, then it’s a general thread.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger or George Lucas dies, he’s impacted enough of our lives to deserve their own thread. A once prolific actor who faded probably goes in general RIP. But the OP might get it wrong for others. Shouldn’t be a big deal.

[Skinypupy]

for the record, my initial comment wasn’t any sort of criticism (I have no issue with either individual threads or this one). Nor was it intended to start a huge debate about the future and inevitable collapse of OO. I just find it interesting which celebrities do and don’t get their own threads, that’s all. It’s a fascinating look into the impact different people had on our lives.

Back on topic, Cindy Morgan passed away at 69. Lacy Underall in Caddyshack definitely made me feel some sort of way in the 80’s.

This part is sad.

Morgan’s female roommate, who had just returned home after being away for the holidays, knocked on Morgan’s bedroom door and received no response that day. However, she did smell a “foul odor” coming from the bedroom, so she called the police to investigate, the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office’s public information office told PEOPLE.

[Daehawk]

Sad way to go all alone. I was just looking her up in her heyday for..uhh...personal reasons. RIP

[Kraken]

I just find it interesting which celebrities do and don’t get their own threads, that’s all. It’s a fascinating look into the impact different people had on our lives.

I'm mostly interested in the lives (and obits) of scientists, astronauts, politicians, and similar historical figures. There was one in today's paper for an ordinary local man who died last week at 102 years old, that detailed his experience in WW2. That kind of matter-of-fact heroism fascinates me.

Of course most of the posts are about entertainers and sports figures. Minor actors get more interaction than Apollo astronauts. Celebrity is weird that way.

[Jeff V]

I'm mostly interested in the lives (and obits) of scientists, astronauts, politicians, and similar historical figures. There was one in today's paper for an ordinary local man who died last week at 102 years old, that detailed his experience in WW2. That kind of matter-of-fact heroism fascinates me.

I would be interested in such things. Do you have a link to post that elaborates on the life of this person?

[Kraken]

I'm mostly interested in the lives (and obits) of scientists, astronauts, politicians, and similar historical figures. There was one in today's paper for an ordinary local man who died last week at 102 years old, that detailed his experience in WW2. That kind of matter-of-fact heroism fascinates me.

I would be interested in such things. Do you have a link to post that elaborates on the life of this person?

Mike Sadler, intrepid desert navigator in World War II, dies at 103

Major Mike Sadler, a World War II navigator on the trackless Sahara of North Africa, who guided Britain’s first special forces across sand seas on daring behind-the-lines night raids that blew up enemy aircraft on the ground and troops in their billets, died Thursday in Cambridge, England. He was 103.

The death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by John Allcock, the secretary of the Special Air Service Regimental Association, a welfare organization for veterans of the elite task force of the British army that Mr. Sadler had belonged to, a prototype for hit-and-run warfare and for the U.S. Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEALs.

Mr. Sadler was one of the first recruits and the last surviving member of the SAS from the year of its founding, 1941. Like a navigator at sea, he used stars, sun and instruments to cross expanses of the Libyan Desert, a wasteland almost the size of India, whose shifting, windblown dunes can be as changing and featureless as an ocean.

Compared with the commandos he guided on truck and jeep convoys — volunteer daredevils who crept onto Nazi airfields; attached time bombs to Messerschmitt fighters, Stuka dive bombers, fuel dumps and pilot quarters; then sped away as explosions roared behind — Mr. Sadler was no hero in the usual sense. Comrades said he might not have fired a single shot at the enemy in North Africa.

But he got his men to the targets — and out again. Without him, they said, the commandos could not have crossed hundreds of miles of desert, found enemy bases on the Mediterranean Coast, destroyed more than 325 aircraft, blown up ammunition and supply dumps, killed hundreds of German and Italian soldiers and pilots, or found their way back to hidden bases.

“His navigating skills were legendary,” wrote Sean Rayment, the author of the book “Tales From the Special Forces Club: Mike Sadler’s Story” (2013). He said Mr. Sadler’s skills had “helped to ensure the success of some of the S.A.S.’s most spectacular missions during the North African campaign.”
...
Mr. Sadler was intrigued by desert navigation. “What amazed me,” he told Rayment, “was that even with the vast, featureless expanses of the desert, a good navigator could pinpoint his exact location by using a theodolite, an air almanac and air navigational tables, and having a good knowledge of the stars.”

He spent weeks studying navigation techniques, including use of a theodolite — a telescopic device, with two perpendicular axes, used mainly by surveyors, for measuring angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. It was not unlike the sextant used by mariners to fix positions at sea.
...
To Mr. Sadler’s commandos — ragtag buccaneers in Arab headdresses and pirate beards — the Libyan Desert was an otherworldly mystery, stretching 1,000 miles south from the Mediterranean and 1,200 miles across, from the Nile to the mountains of Tunisia, a bone-dry realm of howling winds and dead silence, of dunes as tall as a 15-story building, rocky escarpments, hidden wadis and temperatures that could soar to 140 degrees by day and plunge below freezing at night.

Mr. Sadler’s first attack mission was a truck convoy in December 1941. “It was the SAS’s first ground operation after the earlier failed mission, so a lot rested on it,” Mr. Sadler recalled. “My job was to navigate from the Jalo Oasis to the German airfield at Tamet.” It took two days and three nights to cross more than 400 miles of desert. The team reached its target without being detected.

There's more at the link. You'll need a Boston Globe subscription, which everyone should have, or know how to Bypass Paywalls to read the rest.

As an old man who scans the obits every Sunday, I routinely see stories about WW2 vets with remarkable stories (albeit usually less detailed, and they're getting ever fewer and farther between). So there's my contribution. RIP Mike Sadler.

[Isgrimnur]

“Tales From the Special Forces Club: Mike Sadler’s Story”

32 pages for $0.99 on Kindle or your favorite e-reader store, probably.

[Kraken]

Correction: I thought he was local because he was from the other Cambridge.

I would like to see more "or otherwise" in this thread if anyone else is of a similar mind. I'm probably the only old man who enjoys obituaries.

[Blackhawk]

Mike Sadler, intrepid desert navigator in World War II, dies at 103

The last founding member of the SAS, wow. He would have working along side David Stirling. This was literally one of the very first Special Operations soldiers in modern history.

[Isgrimnur]

Adan Canto

Adan Canto, best known to TV audiences for his roles on The Cleaning Lady and Designated Survivor, has died at the age of 42.

“Actor Adan Canto died on Jan. 8, 2024, of appendiceal cancer,” Canto’s publicist, Jennifer Allen, confirmed in a statement to TVLine. “Adan had a depth of spirit that few truly knew. Those who glimpsed it were changed forever. He leaves behind his wife, best friend and creative partner Stephanie Ann Canto as well as his two greatest works of art, Roman Alder, three-and-a-half years of age, and Eve Josephine, one-and-a-half years of age. He will be greatly missed by so many.”

[Daehawk]

I dont know him but God bless him that is WAY too young. I say that so much these days. I cant count how many people Ive seen die at age 63 or so and thats too young.

I first misread the name as Alan Alda for some reason. Damn that put a fright into me. When we lose super stars...at least to me...it feels so shocking.

[Max Peck]

‘The Honeymooners’ star Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton, dies at 99

Joyce Randolph, a veteran stage and television actor whose role as the savvy Trixie Norton on “The Honeymooners” provided the perfect foil to her dimwitted TV husband, has died. She was 99.

Randolph died of natural causes Saturday night at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, her son Randolph Charles told The Associated Press Sunday.

She was the last surviving main character of the beloved comedy from television’s golden age of the 1950s.

[Unagi]

To the moon.

RIP

[McNutt]

I had no idea anyone on that show was still alive. Wow.

Man, that was such a great show.

[hepcat]

Threats of domestic violence has never been funnier!

[Blackhawk]

She was the last - the honeymoon is over.

[RM2]

I enjoyed their music,

Mary Weiss, lead singer of The Shangri-Las, has died

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/19/12257717 ... -las-death

[Daehawk]

Bless her heart. Thanks for the music girl. RIP.

[Daehawk]

Gary Graham has passed at 73. Star Trek and Alien Nation star. I always liked him. He brought a warmth and a peace to all his scenes somehow. Sad. Goodbye Gary. Thanks for the work.

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... 89&dpr=1.3

Gary Graham, the actor best known for starring in “Star Trek: Enterprise,” died Monday. He was 73.

[Sudy]

Norman Jewison dead at 97.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/n ... -1.7091304

[Blackhawk]

Sunrise, sunset.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Gary Graham has passed at 73. Star Trek and Alien Nation star. I always liked him. He brought a warmth and a peace to all his scenes somehow. Sad. Goodbye Gary. Thanks for the work.

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... 89&dpr=1.3

Gary Graham, the actor best known for starring in “Star Trek: Enterprise,” died Monday. He was 73.

Back in the day, I'd say he was perhaps better known as a protagonist in the Alien Nation TV series:

[McNutt]

I remember him most as the protagonist in Robot Jox.

[Blackhawk]

And I mostly remember him as the semi-antagonist from Star Trek: Enterprise.

[hepcat]

He was great on Alien Nation. That show (and the movie) should make a reappearance now, considering our current political environment.

[Isgrimnur]

Melanie, Singer Who Performed at Woodstock and Topped Charts With ‘Brand New Key,’ Dies at 76

No information on the cause of death was immediately given. But Melanie — full name Melanie Safka — had been in the studio earlier this month working on a new record of cover songs, “Second Hand Smoke,” for the Cleopatra label; it would have been her 32nd album, the label said.
...
In early January, according to her label, Melanie recorded a cover of Morrissey’s “Ouija Board Ouija Board” for a forthcoming tribute album celebrating his music. (Morrissey was known to be a fan of hers, having covered “Some Say (I Got Devil).”) She had also just cut a version of and Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” for her planned covers album, “Second Hand Smoke.”

Other songs she had recorded for the new record included Radiohead’s “Creep,” the Moody Blues’ “Nights In White Satin,” Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” and David Bowie’s “Everyone Says Hi.”

[dbt1949]

I really liked her music in her day.

[Kraken]

I had Brand New Key on a 45. Really liked her voice.

[Jeff V]

As an afterthought, I'd also frown on shaming someone for offering their respects to someone that they admired. It's just a thread.

Errr...without getting too R&P, I can think of at least one future death where anyone not rejoicing deserves ridicule. There aren't many people in the world though so wretched that their death is cause for mass celebration.

[Blackhawk]

There are exceptions to every rule. But not even then, I'd just avoid the 'mourning for that person' thread and spend my time in the much busier 'Ding-Dong' thread.