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Moab, Utah is a tourist destination known for great adventures like white-water rafting, snow-skiing and its red rock landscape. But now, stuntman Devin Graham is putting the city on the map for a new reason. Graham, also known as Devin SuperTramp, has created what he calls the world's largest rope swing. The video of Graham and his crew of daredevils is now going viral on YouTube with just under 700,000 views in just 2 days. The pendulum rope is located on the Corona Arch in Arches National Park. Graham and his friends took the idea of a rope swing and made it extreme, by attaching a 150 ft. rope supported by five anchors to the top of a giant redstone rock arch. The behind the scenes video of the construction of the swing details how there is approximately 300 ft of webbing to "make sure nobody dies" and 38 carabiners. While Graham and his friends are carefully engineering the rope, someone in the background casually says, "don't try this at home." The construction of the rope swing itself took about 2 hours, and the crew does several tests. There were a lot of "safety things so in case something went wrong, something else would follow through to make sure they were kept alive." One of the safety test was filling a backpack with rocks, so that it resembled the weight of a person, and putting it through the swing first. The adventurous crew then tests it themselves, first jumping and then free-falling about 130 ft, then they shoot back up about 100 ft and swing. As far as experience goes, the jumpers are all experienced rock climbers and have worked with that kind of equipment before. One of the jumpers described the jump as "terrifying" but said that the "swing probably makes it worth it." Also when it comes to safety, Graham emphasizes to viewers at the end that trying to do something extreme like this rope swing is not worth losing a life. He advises "if you're going to do this even if I tell you not to do it, make sure you guys know what you're doing. People have been commenting from both ends of the spectrum, with one person calling the video "freaking amazing" and another concerned that the swingers are "harming the arch." Still, one person asked if they could give the video "a kabajillion thumbs up."
Let's move from adrenaline pumping stunts to something much more tame--Facebook updates.
There always been a rule on Facebook that to have an account, you have to use your real name in your profile. Now that rule has been amended, but there's a catch. You have to be a celebrity. As of Thursday, well-known public figures with Facebook pages are given the option to submit their accounts for verification, similar to the way accounts are verified on Twitter. Here is an example of how it would work: Eminem wants to verify that he is the Real Slim Shady, aka Marshall Mathers. He does not want an impostor or a spam account to be able to misrepresent using his identity. So the celebrity can also choose how their name is displayed on the page--nickname, stage name or the name on the person's birth certificate. Users of Facebook will now be able to subscribe to these celebrities accounts knowing it's the real deal, and not an impostor. However, there is a difference between Facebook verified and Twitter verified. There will not be any special characters around the name displayed to distinguish the account as being verified. The main difference now will be that the new feature will have the verified account displayed more prominently on subscription suggestion lists.
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