“Janice and I lived in our home since 1979. We raised our children and grandchildren here. Every inch of our house was filled with love. Beautiful memories that can’t be taken away.”
This one hit me hard. I wish what Billy said was true, but it isn’t that simple. As we get older, it gets very difficult to remember everything clearly. When people say “a house full of memories”, what they really mean is a “a house full of memory triggers”. Mr. Crystal, his wife, and his children have lost a lot of those triggers to the fire.
I might be silly and sentimental, but this made me genuinely very sad.
MOD: While the rules of !News do not permit celebrity gossip, this is concerning an ongoing major world event impacting millions. This story would not be significantly different if it were presented as a human interest story about another individual.
I feel bad for people who lose cherished homes, but a lot less when they’re multi-millionaires who can easily buy a new one and replace all the material possessions. How many people lost a home and will have to battle insurance to maybe make them whole? Let’s be sad for them.
How many people lost a home and will have to battle insurance to maybe make them whole? Let’s be sad for them.
Proud of my ability to feel empathy for more than a single social group at a time.
They literally said they feel bad for both but go ahead and break your arm to pat yourself on the back if it makes you feel better.
It does, thank you 🙏
How many people lost a home and will have to battle insurance to maybe make them whole? Let’s be sad for them.
Proud of my ability to feel empathy for more than a single social group at a time.
I do too, but I’m having difficulty reconciling that empathy with the fact that the privileged experiencing this type of loss may also finally be the catalyst for change with will have a greater positive impact on the non-privileged.
How many new and powerful advocates for wildfire control/climate change actions will appear after these tragic events?
I’m sure if he could, he would apologize for making money at you. He seems like a nice guy.
In this case its not about the individual in the story. Its the fact that him losing him home could have a positive effect on many more people not losing their homes. I don’t want people (anyone) to lose their home to fire, but its possible if the “right” people do now, far fewer will in the future.
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$60 mil net worth. I’m sure he’s not spending the night at the Laquinta like when my neighborhood was on fire.
I got the last one before realizing a fire fighter that was working the past 16 hours was right behind me and needed a room to rest and start again tomorrow.
Well, did you share the room with the firefighter?
Gave him the room, and luckily enough, they found 1 more room for us! Buuuut there were many other civilians behind us who had to try the next hotel.
Well done! You’re a good egg! ;)
If that’s what you got out of my post, then you missed the point. Yes, Billy Crystal is getting press because he’s a celebrity but what really hits hard is the loss of a home of 46 years. Nobody is rich enough to replace the irreplaceable, and many people with a lot less means than they are also losing generational homes. It is that irreplaceable loss that hits hard.
I was dirt poor when a hurricane devastated my home literally two weeks after my mother had died. It wasn’t the fact that I uad to live with relatives for months that hurt, it was that all but one photo album covering my mother’s life and most of my childhood were ruined. Material losses hurt but emotional losses are devastating, and they know no social class.
Don’t let your heart harden by putting people in groups of “others”.
This isn’t to detract from your larger “it sucks to have your house burn down” point, but specifically for photo albums, it’s fairly reasonable to have an off-site backup these days. Don’t even need fancy cloud storage or anything, if you don’t want to worry about data harvesting or leaks or whatever – can just get yourself a USB key drive and a safe deposit box. Hell, even just drop them off with a relative or something.
I think that most people have at least some things that they can be sure won’t be lost in a disaster like a house fire, so worth thinking about. I’m not saying that everyone has actually done that, but I do think that it’s a good thing to maybe think about doing.
On the back up idea, remember 321 3 backups, 2 types of media, 1 off-site
I like Billy Crystal.
But he will be fine.
This isn’t really a tragedy worthy of sympathy.
You sound like great person, full of empathy.
Respectfully, I have a hard time wrapping my head around someone grieving over the loss of a home for someone they’ve never met strictly because they’ve seen them in a few movies. I don’t know how many thousands of people lose their homes every year but the vast majority of them are not in a position to purchase another over night.
No doubt, losing a home is a horrible traumatic event for everyone. Personally, if I don’t have the space in my heart to grieve for every family’s loss, I don’t have the room for one celebrity.
Perhaps we could take this time to reflect on the importance of a stable home and the opportunity to create family memories and consider those who’ve never had that to begin with. In fact, I’d venture to guess this is exactly what Crystal would want us to do. As host of Comic Relief, he’s helped to raise awareness and money for the homeless like few celebrities have.
No doubt, losing a home is a horrible traumatic event for everyone. Personally, if I don’t have the space in my heart to grieve for every family’s loss, I don’t have the room for one celebrity.
I’m not sure you meant it this way, but this reads like “If I can’t have empathy for everyone, I refuse to have empathy with even a single person.” Is that truly what you mean or am I misunderstanding you?
Perhaps you should open a dictionary before you make such assumptions about people in a public space.
Empathy: The ability to identify with or understand another’s situation or feelings.
Grieve: To mourn or sorrow for.I can empathize for those who have lost their homes but I’m not able to grieve for them all. My brother’s dog just died on Christmas. I grieved for the loss of the dog and empathized with my family.
I’m not sure why you’re reacting so arrogantly to my question when I was giving you every benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps you should open a dictionary before you make such assumptions about people in a public space.
Ouch, it must be embarrassing to you to be guilty of what you are accusing me of. Make sure you hold onto that dictionary to look up the meaning of the word “assumption”. I didn’t assume. I told you my reading with your context, and told you I didn’t believe you meant it that way, and asked you to clarify. An assumption would have none of that and instead simply said that my reading was your your meaning without any followup for clarity.
It’s become a common and accepted practice to twist the words of others to drive a narrative, to misinform, to bully, and to gain power. Given the opportunity, I will call it out.
It’s also a sad and common practice to reject the meaning of words. We have the world’s information at our fingertips yet people often prefer righteousness over facts.
Be mindful of the words you chose to use.
It’s become a common and accepted practice to twist the words of others to drive a narrative, to misinform, to bully, and to gain power. Given the opportunity, I will call it out.
You’re going to have to make a choice then, and maybe you already have. You have to either choose everyone is out to get you and approach every situation as adversarial, as you did here, or you choose to assume the best of someone that they aren’t actively trying to get you. Part of your decisions should weight whats at stake. If its your life savings on the line then absolutely, be wary. If the stakes are just losing a pissing match on the internet, maybe be a little less guarded. The worst that could happen is someone, of whom you have a low opinion anyway, will put words on a screen you don’t like.
The approach you used here, if you use it everywhere, will have you looking like an aggressive jerk to everyone you interact with for even the simplest of conversations. I doubt that is your intent, but it will be the result.
It’s also a sad and common practice to reject the meaning of words. We have the world’s information at our fingertips yet people often prefer righteousness over facts.
You’re assuming way too much of the general public, and also ignoring that many you’re interacting with on the internet have English as their second, third, or fourth language. Setting the expectation that all of those you interact with will have the same advanced lexicon as you might also leave you unhappy.
Be mindful of the words you chose to use.
I was, and you bit my head off for it. If you’re looking to have people avoid interacting with you in a positive and supportive manor, just keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll get your wish.
We have limited capacity to care, so don’t waste it on the wealthy. Clear enough for you?
Not quite, but more clear. Okay so if this was some rando guy instead of Billy Crystal, you would have empathy for that rando guy? Is that right?
Sad reminder that we should all champion emergency services and help maintain training and equipment if we want the best and fastest response when needed.
It’s a good idea to take video/photos of your entire home. Not just for memories, but for insurance as well.
In the future, there will be programs to recreate your home to experience it in VR based on your videos and photos.
I’ve been playing too much factorio and the VR just gave me a vision of me running up to my burnt husk of a house and all my construction bots flying around and rebuilding everything
