9 ms·
The doctors give me 30 days to live, each post is potentially my last
- aiham 13y agoHe talks about his job in day 2: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Funcondamne.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F52127098365%2Fjour-2 http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl...
- antinitro 13y agoThat really puts life in perspective. Enlightenment, I suppose, is living every day as if it's your last. I wonder how to reach that mindset.
- dhimes 13y agoThere seem to be a few paths, but if I were you I would stick to the ones expounded by the true spiritual geniuses of our species- Jesus and the Buddha. Maybe Mohammed- I don't know enough to say one way or the other.
- antinitro 13y agoYes, I already meditate daily and have noticed profound changes in perspective and mindset. I can't recommend anything more!
- pavs 13y agoI don't know how. But one way I can think of is to not make any long-term plans. All your plans and goals can be achieved in one day. You finish the day reaching your goals. You wake up next day, find yourself alive, you make new goals for that day only. Rinse. Repeat.
- antinitro 13y agoYeah I agree with this. I seem to have reached a point in life where I don't really think about the past and future often, but I wouldn't say I've quite reached enlightenment yet.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago"Live every day like it's your last. That's what they tell you, right? Yeah. What they don't tell you is what to do when it gets to tomorrow and you're not dead yet. You got bills to pay...." - Doug Stanhope.
- adrianN 13y agoI'm really impressed by the quality of Google's translation.
- cschmidt 13y agoMe too. I didn't notice the "translate" in the URL, and just thought it was written by a non-native English speaker. I did a double take at the end when I realized it was translated. Does Google do a particularly good job on French to English? (Bigger training corpus?) I more often used it on Chinese or Japanese, and it didn't seem as good.
- jvzr 13y agoThe source material is written in a rather simple and direct way. Short sentences, very specific words. It may make things easier for Google to translate. Very well written anyway.
- Robin_Message 13y agoI believe the Canadian parliament provides an excellent French-English training corpus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansard#Translation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansard#Translation) For example, see http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=F&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=3&DocId=5072532 http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Lan... and http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=3&DocId=5072532 http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Lan...
- Vivtek 13y agoFrench to English generally works rather well because they have similar sentence structure (except for inverted adjectival order) and neither has a lot of long-distance dependency stuff. Even Systran kicks ass on French to English. Where FR>EN fails is vocabulary. This text, as you see, is really basic terminology, nothing technical. The French categorize things very differently in technical texts sometimes - to the point of despair for the translator. Google tends to do OK on that to a point, then fail in alarming ways when you least expect it.
- prothid 13y agoAll of the posts on one page: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Funcondamne.tumblr.com%2F http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl...
- eschnou 13y agoJust to clarify, I'm not the author, I'm doing fine. This blog is having quite a buzz in France/Belgium right now. Many wonder if fake. Not much evidence pointing one way or the other.
- conradfr 13y agoSeems fake from day one. The tone, the Twitter account etc. But I guess almost twenty year of Internet can make you a bit over-suspicious :)
- cLeEOGPw 13y agoI think you are completely reasonable. Exceptional claims requires exceptional proof, and this blog only has a claim and no proof. I don't see any reason to believe it.
- kohanz 13y agoOTOH, someone who has 30 days left to live has absolutely no motivation or need to prove the validity of his story to anyone.
- jetti 13y agoOne would think that if you are taking the time to write something like this in your last 30 days of life, you would do what you can so it wasn't just dismissed as fake since it would have meant that you have wasted some of the last time on Earth.
- kohanz 13y agoI can't think of any better circumstance than knowing your living days are a numbered few, to absolutely not give a damn about what other people think. There are many therapeutic reasons to write a blog/journal during this time that are not diminished by worrying about skeptics.
- 13y ago
- swombat 13y agoHeavy stuff. I'm reading it in french at http://uncondamne.tumblr.com http://uncondamne.tumblr.com . I've subscribed to the RSS.
- Numberwang 13y agoHim or google reader...the race is on!
- jumblesale 13y agoThat's really bleak. I wonder what kind of disease can kill you in 30 days but otherwise leave you well enough to write and travel? It doesn't sound like he has a history of anything. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing and could hazard a guess?
- lukevdp 13y agoBrain tumors can be very quick, that would be my guess
- jvzr 13y agoHe writes that his wife is worried for his liver (Day 3, I think). Maybe he has Hepatitis C? Edit: Well, this shows that I'm not a doctor. I have no idea if Hepatitis C can kill as quickly as this. Maybe he was diagnosed very late and his malady already is at its final stage?
- aiham 13y ago"See you tomorrow..."
- esamek 13y agoLove the optimism in the farewell.
- johndavidback 13y agoThat is an interesting parting phrase. I suppose on that level where he's coming to grips with only have 30 days, he must be rationalizing that today is the first of those, and that he'll at least get the 30... Heavy. I can't even imagine the understanding of my own mortality where I could say "See you tomorrow... Maybe." and actually mean it.
- Yeri 13y agoThe three dots ("...") show an uncertainty. I could imagine someone saying see you tomorrow, even if there is a (big) chance that won't happen. A form of self mockery.
- jvzr 13y agoIt's very well written. Touching, to say the least.
- ppradhan 13y agoYou read the post and feel pretty bad. You load the comments. You see what the top comments are about and it dawns on you - this is why engineers are stereotyped as being emotionless robots.
- Killah911 13y agoOr people sick of some PR firm's bullshit stunts, jerking people around for a few more follower or clicks. When things don't add up, we take notice rather than just wishing it to the way it ought to be. It may very well be that the story is true. But when you see obvious giveaways, not only is it valid to doubt what is written but in my opinion a damn public service. I felt sad after reading the post, reflecting on my own mortality, and fleeting times. Then I felt sadder that some A-Hole may be deliberately trying to manipulate negative emotions. Perhaps nothing is off limits.
- ppradhan 13y agowhen i wrote that comment, the top conversations were about how good the google translation was. that's what i was referring to.
- Killah911 13y agoAh! Taken in context your comment makes more sense. I must admit that while reading the post, my first feeling was of sorrow, but as someone fascinated with technology, I was also thinking a little about someone who speaks a different language being able to communicate their innermost thoughts with people half way around the world. While posting a comment, stating the story is sad, might be redundant. But, posting a comment about some silver lining might be a common response. My siblings and I laughed at some of the funny events about my dad did while transporting his body to the cemetery. The feeling of grief was overwhelming and that was a coping mechanism. That being said, given the level of info that was passed on, one might be more enamored by the blog and twitter and translate, as they try to cope with the terror or death. Smells a lot to me like PR company BS. While I suspected it when reading the post, looking thru the HN comments showed that my suspicions weren't unfounded.
- orofino 13y agoI feel like this is perhaps fake. The first post read well to me, seemed reasonable, at least the first time through. The second post, about the job, is what gave me suspicion. The way he quits, the feeling of "liberation", it borders on sociopathic in some ways. Pretending you're going on holiday when in reality you're going to die, who has time for such games when they've got a 30 day timer running. It reads like a movie, not like my experience with reality.
- igor_k 13y agoAgree, the second post is a giveaway - plus some words French professionals don't use such as "plan pension". Same for the thord. The first post is really good though.
- seren 13y agoI also stumbled over "plan pension", I have not heard anyone used that wording before. Could it be more common in Canada ?
- alanctgardner2 13y agoNever heard it in Quebecois French, Anglicisms like that tend to be continental French in my experience. Or Chiac.
- kohanz 13y agoYes, for English speaking Canadians a "pension plan" is a common phrase. No idea about French-speaking Canadians.
- jdangu 13y agoLooks like it's a term used in Belgium: https://www.google.fr/search?q=%22plan+pension%22&lr=lang_fr https://www.google.fr/search?q=%22plan+pension%22&lr=lan...
- igor_k 13y ago
- sasoon 13y agoAfter reading day 2 and day 3, it started to sound fake
- camus 13y agoi'll assume it's fake. We dont know who the guy is, no name no address , nothing. i could come up with the same stuff ( i'm french). IF you cant verify an information , assume it is fake.
- oh_sigh 13y agoThis is going to be revealed as a "public art piece" in about 45 days, with commentary on the morbidity of the media outlets that picked up on the story.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- itsybitsycoder 13y agoIf you are told you have 30 days to live, you're much more likely to die tomorrow than someone expected to live another 60 years. The 30 days isn't an exact number, it's a guess, and whatever's expected to kill you in around 30 days might take a turn for the worse at any time. My grandmother died the day after the doctors said she had a few months to live.
- ck2 13y agoEven if it turns out to be fiction, it does make you stop and think at least for a moment how you'd spend your own final 30 days. I think I'd like to travel. Not sure.
- knodi 13y agovalar morghulis
- xutopia 13y agoWhat does it matter if this were fake? It's not like they're asking us to donate a tithe.
- nijk 13y agoIt normalizes dishonesty and steals attention from truth.
- yoster 13y agoWhy would the author waste time posting about the things he is doing? I hardly speak for everyone, but I would be using that time to for a bucket list, visiting friends, and other personal things that needed to be done. <Well, I think my son must have created and configured the blog. He is an engineer and he isn't sure?
- jterce 13y agoI wonder about all this talk and arguing back and forth over whether "it's a fake". What this man is expressing is real. I can confirm it is real, because as a human I can feel many of the same things, as I read it. Whether he will die in 30 days or not, we don't know. And you can, of course, argue about that all day long. You might even be quite put out if he does not. But whether he is having these thoughts and feelings because he is about to die, or whether he is simply exploring these thoughts and feelings because he is a human (and facing death like us all), they are no less real. You may call one fiction because the man does not die on cue, but after reading it, I say it is not fake.
- dclowd9901 13y agoWell said. Joseph Gordon Levitt isn't actually facing death in the movie 50/50, but I can assure you the anxieties expressed in that movie touch me profoundly.
- gesman 13y agoThere was someone else who was sent home by doctors to die: http://www.presentlove.com/lester-levenson/ http://www.presentlove.com/lester-levenson/
- jacquesm 13y agoI can't tell whether this is a fake or not. But ever since calling the one about the one night stand woman in Denmark that wanted to contact the father of her baby I've had a healthy dose of unbelief for anything that goes viral and that involves some personal tragedy. Another couple of those and real people with real problems or calls for help will find it impossible to be heard. If this is real I hope he makes the most of whatever time he's got left.
- hef19898 13y agoI just read the french original, and fake or not it is certainly well written. If it's not fake, I hope he keeps up like this until the inevitable. Ah, and before I forget, he's certainly right with a lot of things, fake or not.
- l0c0b0x 13y agoThat's got to be the saddest thing I've read on HN. I'm going to hug my sons, and play with them more.
- shenanigoat 13y agoGet this man a ticket to Waponi Woo.