Merged Arday life and death

[Emily's Cat]

I should think many people have medical records as long as their arm.

Yeah, many people in their 70s, and many people with severe conditions. Just not many people in their 30s who experienced ALL of those things within a relatively short period of their lives, while also being an active athlete and attaining a doctorate.

It's the combination of things that should raise some red flags. And frankly, I'm at a loss as to how you can so placidly accept them all as being completely true.

 

[Emily's Cat]

We can't possibly know. The hacks do not have access to his medical records. Rolfe and Emily's Cat are incredulous Arday could have had Global Child Development issues, autism and dyslexia; that he could have been mugged, been in a car accident, been in a coma feeling 'locked in', plus epileptic seizures. It's called the 'falling illness' so quite possible he fell due to a seizure whilst running and at the same time injuring his leg causing it to swell up. It is noted in Arday's contemporaneous log of the 35-days marathon that something happened that curtailed him and which needed an ice bath. Now epilepsy still has a ring of stigma around it, which could be why it was not spelt out in large for public viewing.

Pro-tip: I am actually epileptic, so you know, not really a lot of stigma around it. But whatever you need to tell yourself I guess.

Genuinely, I found this an interesting topic, and was quite displeased by the state of education in general. This one person being prone to egregious embellishment should be embarassing to Cambridge, but really the issue is with schools not doing appropriate due diligence and letting unethical behavior slide when it gains them social virtue points.

But now? Now I'm here for the sheer morbid fascination of watching people tie themselves in knots trying to insist that everything Arday claimed could only possibly be true.

 

[dirtywick]

Of course they aren't, but isn't that just another reason why elite institutions should avoid hiring woefully underqualified people and then promoting them as public intellectuals? Arday was a victim of systematic efforts (at both Liverpool and Cambridge) to promote him in spite of his inability to function at the Ph.D. level.

yeah, racists will exploit situations like this to normalize their extreme beliefs. definitely something to be aware and not dismissive of

 

[Steve]

Yeah, many people in their 70s, and many people with severe conditions. Just not many people in their 30s who experienced ALL of those things within a relatively short period of their lives, while also being an active athlete and attaining a doctorate.

It's the combination of things that should raise some red flags.
And frankly, I'm at a loss as to how you can so placidly accept them all as being completely true.

Not too familiar with Vixen threads, I see.

 

[ahhell]

yeah the guy is a fraud, but do you think the racists are sitting this one out?

You can go look at my previous posts, I've said the opposite. Sure, there may be, probably is a racist pile, that doesn't mean this isn't a story or that Arday wasn't a fraud. Its like OJ, he was probably guilty and probably framed for the crime he committed.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Just beginning to surface from heavy sedation or anesthesia, mistaking a dream for overheard conversation?

People be weird coming out of anesthesia. I was actually kind of disappointed that the most entertaining thing I did was ask for a warm blanket because I was cold and couldn't stop shivering. I'm genuinely that boring.

I somehow doubt that anyone waking from anaesthesia would think they were actually locked in for any period of time worthy of it being called locked in and not just sleep paralysis. Could he have dreamed something like a whole month or two of being fully aware but unable to move? Because lock in isn't a coma, it's being fully aware. Possibly he could. But then didn't he look at the calendar on the wall nor ask anyone what date it is? Talk to anyone about wanting to unplug him? I would definitely want to have words with my family if I thought they just wanted to unplug me. Ask the doctor about it? Or just "how long have I been in here?"

But really, the time difference is all you need. If I somehow had a dream that's a month or two long and l thought it actually happened, I'm sure that sooner or later I'd notice that there's a discrepancy between that and the real date.

 

[smartcooky]

Yeah, many people in their 70s, and many people with severe conditions. Just not many people in their 30s who experienced ALL of those things within a relatively short period of their lives, while also being an active athlete and attaining a doctorate.

It's the combination of things that should raise some red flags. And frankly, I'm at a loss as to how you can so placidly accept them all as being completely true.

Did you know the word "gullible" is not in any dictionary?

 

[smartcooky]

Pro-tip: I am actually epileptic, so you know, not really a lot of stigma around it. But whatever you need to tell yourself I guess.

Genuinely, I found this an interesting topic, and was quite displeased by the state of education in general. This one person being prone to egregious embellishment should be embarassing to Cambridge, but really the issue is with schools not doing appropriate due diligence and letting unethical behavior slide when it gains them social virtue points.

But now? Now I'm here for the sheer morbid fascination of watching people tie themselves in knots trying to insist that everything Arday claimed could only possibly be true.

Yup. Its like watching a real-life game of 'Twster', seeing certain posters bending themselves into something akin to a human pretzel as they strive to justify believing anything that fits their preferred conclusion.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

But now? Now I'm here for the sheer morbid fascination of watching people tie themselves in knots trying to insist that everything Arday claimed could only possibly be true.

Some of his claims quite trivially can't be true, or not for him.

I mean, take his claim of running 600 miles in 6 days. That's just short of 4 marathons a day, for 6 days. If he can keep up the same jogging pace as in his other marathons, that would take him about 20 hours per day. Leaving him with just 4 hours to eat, wash, sleep, and go at it again tomorrow. And probably not all in a row. You're not gonna cover the calories for 100 miles on just breakfast and a couple of Mars bars you brought along to snack on while running. At some point you have to stop to eat lunch. So including breakfast and dinner, that would probably leave him with, what? Maybe 2 hours of sleep a day?

Even without the physical effort, by the third or fourth day you'd be going into microsleep. I tried that in high school, so I can tell you what it looks like: seeing the world through a very slow strobe light, where you're half a second semi-awake, half a second asleep.

 

[angrysoba]

Some of his claims quite trivially can't be true, or not for him.

I mean, take his claim of running 600 miles in 6 days. That's just short of 4 marathons a day, for 6 days. If he can keep up the same jogging pace as in his other marathons, that would take him about 20 hours per day. Leaving him with just 4 hours to eat, wash, sleep, and go at it again tomorrow. And probably not all in a row. You're not gonna cover the calories for 100 miles on just breakfast and a couple of Mars bars you brought along to snack on while running. At some point you have to stop to eat lunch. So including breakfast and dinner, that would probably leave him with, what? Maybe 2 hours of sleep a day?

Even without the physical effort, by the third or fourth day you'd be going into microsleep. I tried that in high school, so I can tell you what it looks like: seeing the world through a very slow strobe light, where you're half a second semi-awake, half a second asleep.

Yep, I've already gone over that....

For me, I certainly didn’t delight in his misfortune, and was shocked to hear he (probably) killed himself.

But I did find some of his claims amusing in their absurdity, and I don't mind admitting that I laughed about some of those at the time, and much less so now.

For example,...

He claimed to have run 100 miles a day for six days.

Do you know how much that is? That is four marathons a day! A good marathon time for someone of his age would be about three and a half to four hours, and that’s running fresh and pushing your limits. So he did FOUR of those in a row, totaling 14 to 16 hours, washed, ate and then slept for maybe 7 or 8 hours. woke up and did it all again, repeat five times. Even David Goggins or Courtney Dewalter would have found that a challenge and that’s what they do for a living!

Ironically the 30 marathons in 35 days would be more plausible, especially if he had done it Eddie Izzard style and walked a lot of the marathons. That way he could have done them in eight hours each. That’s doable. But then he mentions a twist, that he got a hairline fracture and his leg doubled in size for a huge chunk of those marathons. Oh my god! Needs to be seen to be believed.

It’s like someone saying:
“my aunt has three buttocks…”
“Wow! That’s weird and something I have never heard of but I suppose it is possi…”
“And she was born on Neptune!”

The obvious nonsense undermines any other claims that you might give the benefit of the doubt to.

And sadly one of the most pernicious is the one that you, Vixen, used to promote Woody Brown and your claims that he did too get a masters at Yale and write a bestseller with a letterboard, interpreted by his screenwriter mother, while not looking at it and watching Thomas the Tank Engine.

We can now be extremely skeptical of Arday’s claims about his non-verbal youth given that so much of the rest of his life story was obviously made up.

That said, it is a sad story. Regardless of how much he made stuff up, and tried to use the police and lawyers to prevent his lies being exposed, the incessant hounding was over the top. The problem is that anyone involved in a pile-on presumably feels that their part of the pile-on is justified and only others are going too far.

That was also in response to Vixen.

Let's face it. There's not really much more to be said about it. If your aim is to persuade Vixen then you may as well try to reverse entropy for all the good your efforts will do you.

 

[Darat]

Jesus!

Yeah it isn't quite the gold standard of evidence as an elderly Scottish gentleman said it in a pub but it's close!

 

[Rolfe]

I somehow doubt that anyone waking from anaesthesia would think they were actually locked in for any period of time worthy of it being called locked in and not just sleep paralysis. Could he have dreamed something like a whole month or two of being fully aware but unable to move? Because lock in isn't a coma, it's being fully aware. Possibly he could. But then didn't he look at the calendar on the wall nor ask anyone what date it is? Talk to anyone about wanting to unplug him? I would definitely want to have words with my family if I thought they just wanted to unplug me. Ask the doctor about it? Or just "how long have I been in here?"

But really, the time difference is all you need. If I somehow had a dream that's a month or two long and l thought it actually happened, I'm sure that sooner or later I'd notice that there's a discrepancy between that and the real date.

None of it makes sense. Anyway, people with locked-in syndrome can't talk. Blinking and eye movements only. And I don't know the recovery rate, if there even is one.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

TBH, what I find more unbelievable, and even slanderous, is his claim that a doctor would recommend to just pull the plug on someone locked in, instead of even trying to use morse code, much less at least try some therapy. AND would even do that in the presence of someone who's fully aware and hearing everything. And shouldn't he at least be consulted as a fully aware grown-ass adult who is able to communicate, or at least can be taught to?

I mean, it's like talking around grandpa about putting him down.

 

[Rolfe]

Some of his claims quite trivially can't be true, or not for him.

I mean, take his claim of running 600 miles in 6 days. That's just short of 4 marathons a day, for 6 days. If he can keep up the same jogging pace as in his other marathons, that would take him about 20 hours per day. Leaving him with just 4 hours to eat, wash, sleep, and go at it again tomorrow. And probably not all in a row. You're not gonna cover the calories for 100 miles on just breakfast and a couple of Mars bars you brought along to snack on while running. At some point you have to stop to eat lunch. So including breakfast and dinner, that would probably leave him with, what? Maybe 2 hours of sleep a day?

Even without the physical effort, by the third or fourth day you'd be going into microsleep. I tried that in high school, so I can tell you what it looks like: seeing the world through a very slow strobe light, where you're half a second semi-awake, half a second asleep.

The 600 miles in 6 days was said to have been done on a treadmill. He later rowed this back to one-day-on, one-day-off, with alternate days being rest (and eating) days, which answers some of the above objections. (But note that that protocol comes to eleven days, not twelve as he said, which again suggests making it up on the hoof and an inability to count.)

I believe over 600 miles in six days has been done by one or more specialist ultra-runners, presumably going faster than a jog to give time for eating and sleeping. But it's world record category, not something a random gym teacher would knock out on a week's leave.

There's also the claim of having run from Edinburgh to London, though I'm not aware of a time being claimed for that. Oddly, that distance also given as 600 miles, but the two cities are actually only about 400 miles apart. I wonder if actually this isn't just another recounting of the alleged treadmill run rather than being a separate event. "That's equivalent to the distance from Edinburgh to London!" but he doesn't know what the actual distance is. Then maybe the narrative changes to it being a separate event.

 

[Rolfe]

TBH, what I find more unbelievable, and even slanderous, is his claim that a doctor would recommend to just pull the plug on someone locked in, instead of even trying to use morse code, much less at least try some therapy. AND would even do that in the presence of someone who's fully aware and hearing everything. And shouldn't he at least be consulted as a fully aware grown-ass adult who is able to communicate, or at least can be taught to?

I mean, it's like talking around grandpa about putting him down.

Well, I think the implication of the story is that the doctors thought he was in a persistent vegetative state, not realising he was conscious. But the story is complete flim-flam on every possible level.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

A persistent vegetative state where he can move his eyes and blink? Plus I think that a simple EEG would have cleared up the difference. I mean, I can see how that story would seem plausible for Arday, since he was just as clueless about anything else, but to me it just tells me that he was lying. A whole hospital wouldn't be just clueless.

 

[angrysoba]

Well, I think the implication of the story is that the doctors thought he was in a persistent vegetative state, not realising he was conscious. But the story is complete flim-flam on every possible level.

PVS and locked in are completely different, almost opposite, things.

 

[lionking]

Pro-tip: I am actually epileptic, so you know, not really a lot of stigma around it. But whatever you need to tell yourself I guess.

Thank you. My eldest son has had two seizures over 20:years ago, and none since. I never saw any stigma at all. And why should there be? Epilepsy is not caused by lifestyle choices.

 

[angrysoba]

Thank you. My eldest son has had two seizures over 20:years ago, and none since. I never saw any stigma at all. And why should there be? Epilepsy is not caused by lifestyle choices.

Well, there should not be a stigma, of course, but there are plenty of illnesses and disabilities that people are afflicted with through no fault of their own which nonetheless can be, and have been, stigmatized.

 

[Belgian thought]

I think a Möbius strip is a better shape describing so many views and opinions nowadays.

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