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The Sun
5 hours ago
- General
- The Sun
The sneaky online habit that may have a darker meaning – & it could spell trouble for your romantic relationships
IF you have a one-sided crush that is so intense it's basically moved into your head and started redecorating, you might be experiencing a powerful (and exhausting) romantic state known as limerence. It's not just butterflies - it's obsession-level longing, and social media is currently buzzing with explanations about this all-consuming love sickness that many are secretly battling. 6 We're spending more and more time online, peeking into the lives of people we've never met - friends, influencers, strangers - and falling a little bit in love from a distance. It's admiration turned obsession, and it's fuelling an emotional epidemic. What is limerence? Limerence is a state of intense, obsessive infatuation with another person, characterised by intrusive thoughts, a desire for reciprocation, and a tendency to idealise the object of affection. It can infiltrate every part of a person's life, too. Many who experience it find it hard to focus on anything else other than their 'limerent object,' - and their work, social life, and other relationships suffer as a result. Anna Runkle, relationship specialist and author of self help books Connectability and Re-Regulated, explains that being 'stuck' in limerence 'becomes a way of life that leaves people isolated and lonely - and makes it nearly impossible to build a real, healthy relationship". The obsession is not based in reality; it is 'the projection of an ideal,' says psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson: 'Relationships are built on negotiated reality - not fantasy. True love is when you stop idealising and start serving - when you move from projection to participation.' What causes limerence? Runkle emphasises that limerence is not a sign of being broken or irrational - it's an emotional injury, often rooted in past trauma. And like many trauma wounds, it can be healed. 'If people didn't pay attention to who you are, and what's unique about you, we develop a capacity for imagination and we can see love where there is no love,' she explains. This behaviour - though obsessive - is not the same as stalking. Most people with limerence never act out their fantasies or harass the other person in any way. Instead, the fixation tends to be inward, private, and emotionally exhausting. How to tell if you have limerence? If you're not sure if you're in it right now, there's one sneaky habit that could be a key indicator, Runkle says: 'You're searching the other person's social media, believing that you see coded signs in what they're posting—that it was really like a little wink at you or a reference to something that you like." But what is it like to be a limerent person? These real-life stories show what happens when limerence takes over... 6 Emma: "On paper, I have it together, but my love life feels like a loop I can't escape" "From the outside, I look like I have it together; two degrees, an interesting career, I'm stylish, articulate, and I like to think I'm attractive," she says. "But my romantic life almost always feels like chaos. "Looking back, the pattern is clear. I am never really 'single'. I go from one intense 'relationship' to limerence to a new 'relationship'. Rinse and repeat. Each of these relationships only lasts around four to six months." Emma continues: "I swear it always feels mutual at first. We will spend all weekend together and will text nonstop. It's passionate and silly and incredibly intense. I know I can be manic. I wrap people up in that energy. "But I always go for people that I know are emotionally - or physically - unavailable and once the real relationship ends, the obsession lingers. "I find myself replaying conversations in my head; moments of tenderness, things their friends said to me. "In the most recent case, I was invited to his friend's birthday party at a bar just a month or two into seeing each other. "Two of his friends separately told me, 'He's never like this with anyone,' and, 'He's crazy about you.' They were probably just drunk pleasantries, but I clung to it like gospel." Emma adds: "I look for signs everywhere. If I glance at my phone at the exact second he texts, I think the stars are aligning (never mind the fact that I had been checking obsessively every few minutes). "Then I start playing one-sided games. If I text him and have already sent two messages, it's his turn; I can't send a paragraph if he only sends a sentence - the thread has to look 'fair' if someone were to scroll through it. "It's like I'm trying to choreograph proof that I'm wanted, not chasing. 6 "I met the guy I'm currently hooked on while I was working abroad for a few months. That definitely added to the romance and spontaneity of it. And whilst I know, deep down, that it's impractical to be together, I can't stop day-dreaming about the 'what-ifs'. "At the moment, I'm trying to go no contact. I've blocked him, deleted every photo, and scrubbed my phone clean of reminders. "I make sure that I surround myself with friends and family that will hold me accountable and I'm trying therapy. Honestly, the cliché healthy habits like working out and journaling have helped too. "I guess my goal now is to be 'crushless'… It takes up so much brain space." Kenny: "I love my wife, but I'm obsessed with a barmaid at my local pub" Kenny explains: "For me, it started innocently. I'm a married man in my 40s, and I've known the barmaid at my local pub for years. We'd always had friendly banter, nothing more. But then something shifted. "Suddenly, every glance, every smile, every throwaway joke seemed charged, like it carried some hidden message just for me. I felt like a teenager again - giddy, restless, electric. 6 "Let me be clear: this wasn't love. Not even close. She's not someone I'd ever want to date. Honestly, she's a total train wreck. If she ever turned to me and said, 'Let's go out back and make out,' I'd run screaming in the opposite direction. "Still, when she started texting me about other guys, venting about her latest hook-ups and asking for advice, something snapped in me. I couldn't take it anymore. "In a strange haze of jealousy and confusion, I texted her to tell her that I had feelings, and I couldn't keep hearing about her guy troubles anymore. The message was clumsy and passive-aggressive. I know I didn't really want to pursue anything with her. I just wanted the aching to stop. "It backfired. She saw it as a betrayal of trust, and we haven't spoken since," he adds. 6 "Desperate to undo the damage the text had made, I turned to a chatbot for advice," Kenny admits. "I remember driving to pick my wife up from the hospital after she'd had surgery, and arguing with the 'bot about it. That's when it told me: 'This could be limerence.' "I had never heard the word before, but once I started reading about it, everything clicked. Suddenly, I wasn't just 'crazy' or 'creepy'; I was experiencing something that had a name. And soon, I found a whole community that understood exactly what I was going through. "That was the lightbulb moment. "I had never heard of it, but soon found an online community of other people talking about their own, similar feelings. How to stop the cycle Likening limerence to a drug addiction, Anna Runkle shares the following tips to help you stop obsessing: No contact: And no contact means no contact. Stop texting, calling, or "accidentally" bumping into them. Block them: Unfollow or block on social media. No more "stalking" their feed. Stop searching for 'coded messages': Those "coded messages" you're seeing? They're just your imagination - remind yourself that these are your 'romantic projections' that are not based in reality. Put down the tarot cards: engaging with psychics is prolonging your obsession - watch out for emotional spending on services that feed the fantasy. Seek support: Runkle also points to 12-step programs for relationship addiction, which are free and widely available. Heal yourself: Often, limerence comes from old emotional wounds, like childhood trauma. A good therapist can help you figure out what's really driving your obsession. "These online forums helped me understand why I may be so prone to obsessing over people I don't even really like, and soon I found I am pretty much a textbook case. "I have OCD, and I'd say that my mother was nutty enough to have caused some 'maladaptive coping mechanisms' that everyone seems to be talking about. And now that I understand limerence, I can see that this isn't the first time it's happened," he continues. "In the past I'd find myself thinking 'why are all the people I'm into, not into me?' Now I realise that I was limerent, and my obsessive tendencies were burning so bright that all of the normal relationships in my life seemed so dull and faded by comparison. 6 "My wife even still tells a funny story from before we officially started dating: we were at the bar and I introduced my future wife to this woman I was obsessed with as 'my sister.' I don't know why, she wasn't anyone I would ever want to 'be' with, but I was obsessed with wanting her to 'see' me in that way. "Later in the night I was kissing my (now) wife and she said 'what must that chick think, seeing you kiss your 'sister' like that?!' "Looking back, I don't know that my limerence for that woman ever 'ended'. My future wife and I moved away from the area, so that situation resolved itself. "I want to clarify - my relationship with my wife is wonderful. I suppose over time, as all couples do, we've fallen into a rhythm that is at times more functional than romantic," Kenny says. "I guess that made me more vulnerable to catching limerent feelings for the waitress at the bar. I haven't told my wife about it, but the barmaid is acting weird around her now, so I'm afraid she's going to say something. "As for my current situation, I haven't told my wife about it, but the barmaid is acting weird around her now, so I'm afraid she's going to say something. "The shame has been the hardest part. I've barely told anyone about how I feel and haven't talked to anyone in-person the way I can on the forum. "Coming out and saying 'I have an obsessive fixation on someone' still seems a bit much for people to process," he adds. "Before I understood limerence, it just felt like something creepy or immature. "It will be so nice when this becomes more widely known and the stigma drops."
New York Times
4 days ago
- General
- New York Times
Why Are Young Men Still Struggling?
To the Editor: 'What's the Matter With Men?,' by David French (Opinion newsletter, July 10), which recounts his conversation with the clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, calls attention to the fact that males are doing poorly relative to females in many ways — academically, physically, psychologically and socially. Both ideological and technological causes for this lagging among boys are considered. While I think these factors are important, the larger problem is that while females have dramatically changed their position in society for the better, males have stagnated in an outmoded set of masculine norms. Mr. French seems to assume that masculinity is a given. Yet as a research psychologist focused on masculinity, I believe that masculinity is best thought of as a set of social norms, embedded in culture and a historical era. The current definition of masculinity is predicated on avoidance of stereotypical female characteristics, such as emotional self-awareness and expression, compassion and empathy — the very traits that account for a successful life. Ronald F. LevantCopley, OhioThe writer is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron. To the Editor: David French and I both remember a time when men were openly assumed to be superior to women. The changes for the good that we have seen in our lifetimes in opportunities for women clearly mirror those of other repressed groups, but often progress comes with real growing pains. Today too many look at the difficulties faced by young boys and long to return to a time when white men relied on the ignorant security of superiority. To some, those simple answers remain seductive, but they come at a cost to girls, women and any group that has suffered the weight of oppression. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
7 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
The ‘Boy Crisis' Is Overblown
For the past few years I have heard endlessly about the education crisis for boys. In short: Compared to girls, boys around the world are underperforming academically, and this is described as a distinctly modern problem. At this point, it is assumed that young boys and men are at a disadvantage in schools, and need help that girls and young women do not. Reactionary conservative commentators, including Jordan Peterson, say boys are underperforming in school because the 'vast majority of teachers are not only female but infantilizing female and radically left,' boys are made to sit for hours at a time, which is against their 'nature,' and they are told that their 'ambition is pathological,' Peterson said in a conversation with my Times Opinion colleague David French. More liberal or centrist pundits, such as Richard Reeves, the author of 'Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It,' agree that part of the problem is a lack of male teachers, and track the problem back to 1972, when Title IX was passed; 'within a decade, women had caught up and then just blew right past the men' in terms of college graduation rates, Reeves said. I had long accepted the basic premise that a lack of male teachers drove the crisis of learning in boys, and that these problems are fairly recent. But sometime this spring I started thinking about the stories I had heard from older friends and relatives, men and women, about their own school experiences. Boys and girls were made to sit for long periods of time in the 1950s, and their punishment for disobeying was likely harsher than it is in many schools today. (I have heard so many tales of nuns hitting kids with rulers.) I don't think there was a widespread embrace of boys acting out in the classroom in previous generations, and yet no one is arguing that American education of the Eisenhower era made boys less ambitious. This revelation made me want to see if there was actually empirical support for the boy-crisis argument. What I found shocked me. There's not much solid evidence that boys do better with male teachers. And girls have been getting better grades than boys since before women had the right to vote. Let's start with what Peterson says about the 'radically left' political leanings of female teachers. In 2021, the Heritage Foundation, hardly a liberal bastion, found that 'a nationally representative survey of K-12 teachers does not support the idea that America's public schoolteachers are radical activists.' And further, 'Teachers may very well be allies, not opponents, in the pushback against the application of critical race theory and other divisive ideologies in the classroom.' But what about the fact that the majority of American teachers are now women? The teaching force in the United States has been majority female for over 100 years. Reeves notes that the current teaching force is 23 percent male — which is roughly what it was between 1920 and 1940. The number of male teachers ticked up a bit after World War II, but peaked at around 30 percent. It's not like our public schools are bereft of male leadership, either. While women make up the majority of elementary school principals, men dominate middle school and high school administrations. Only a quarter of superintendents, who are in charge of multiple public schools or districts, are women. What's more, the evidence that students do better with same-gender teachers is mixed at best. For example, a 2021 study using seven years of data looked at students in Indiana from grades three through eight and found that 'female teachers are better at increasing both male and female students' achievement than their male counterparts in elementary and middle schools,' and 'contrary to popular speculation, boys do not exhibit higher academic achievement when they are assigned to male teachers.' (The biggest positive effect was for girls when they had female math teachers.) All that said, the research that really surprised me was a meta analysis from 2014 by Daniel and Susan D. Voyer that showed that girls have been outperforming boys in school since 1914. This suggests that female academic achievement is hard to correlate with the post-1972 impact of Title IX or other downstream consequences of second-wave feminism. And going back further, I find it hard to believe that a teaching force trained before women had access to their own credit cards was somehow favoring girls, when the society around them wasn't even sold on higher education for women. The Voyers discuss in the paper a similar 'boy crisis' news cycle that happened almost 20 years ago: A 2006 Newsweek article suggested that boys across the United States are falling behind girls in terms of school achievement, whereas 30 years ago, it was presumably females who were lagging. Unfortunately, no specific references were provided to support these statements. However, this did not prevent more reporting of this so-called boy crisis in various newspapers, magazines and other media. Judith Warner wrote an essay for The Times in 2006 very much like this one, called 'What Boy Crisis?' It showed that 'the near-ubiquitous belief that our nation's boys are being academically neglected and emotionally persecuted by teachers whose training, style and temperament favor girls' was 'little more than a myth.' The myth persists because there's always a market for anti-feminist backlash, and now that we're in the middle of an anti-education backlash as well, a mostly female teaching force is sadly an easy target. The 'crisis' doesn't seem to be that boys are doing particularly poorly of late. It seems to be that girls are finally being rewarded in the form of college attainment and more equal pay for their efforts. Make no mistake, there are boys and men who are legitimately struggling now, in school and in life, and they deserve our care and respect. Boys may be cognitively behind girls when they enter school, and we should prepare them better. Everybody should have more recess time, not just 'fidgety boys.' We should figure out why fewer men than women are choosing to go to college. Is it the cost of higher education? Is it that they think they'll earn more money without college, in a trade? In rural areas, young men may be making a rational economic decision to eschew college, as they can earn well without it, and young women are making a rational decision to attend college because that's their only ticket to financial solvency. According to a 2024 report from Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce, 'More than half of men in rural areas with no more than a high school diploma have a good job, but the same is true for only 21 percent of women with a high school diploma.' These are all important questions to consider. But if we are identifying the root of boys' problems based on vibes rather than real evidence, we are not going to find helpful solutions. By incorrectly blaming female teachers, society may also end up downplaying some of the gendered harassment that girls and their female teachers experience — another problem that doesn't seem to be abating. I called Daniel Voyer to ask him the million-dollar question: If it's not because of some kind of discrimination against boys, why do girls get better grades? Voyer said the first thing to note is that the differences between boys and girls are still not enormous — they are more alike than different. But while we can 'speculate until hell freezes over' about why girls do somewhat better, one of the reasons could be the way boys are socialized. To sum it up, it's seen by some as unmanly to study, and there's less of a social cost to girls to be nerdy and to be seen trying to do well. Based on Voyer's analysis, gender performance gaps were smallest in regions like Scandinavia, 'because they are very strong on gender equity,' he said. I also wondered if boys are being socialized at home to know that they don't have to put in as much effort as their mothers and sisters, which might have a knock-on effect. So much of doing well at school and in the modern work force is executive function and organization. If every domestic task or household plan is carried out by a woman, boys may not learn that they need to try. As one high schooler interviewed about why boys take on fewer leadership roles in school told Education Week's Elizabeth Heubeck earlier this year, 'Guys know that if they sit back and relax, something will get done by somebody else.' End Notes The Scarlet Jumbotron: Like everybody else, I have been following the Coldplay concert cheating scandal. (If those words mean nothing to you, catch up here. In short: A former C.E.O. and a fellow executive were caught canoodling on a Jumbotron in Massachusetts and their whole lives were blown up. The C.E.O. resigned.) On one hand, I really hate our hyper-surveillance culture. I know that there are cameras everywhere, but I don't think it is good for us as humans to all accept that we are being watched and judged constantly. I won't defend cheating on one's spouse, but I think the internet's outsize moralizing is over the top. Everybody's grounded, and your homework assignment is to read 'The Scarlet Letter.' On the other hand, it really is pretty dumb to cheat someplace so public. Feel free to drop me a line about anything here. Thank you for being a subscriber Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.
National Post
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- National Post
FIRST READING: Canadian talent (and money) is fleeing to the U.S.
First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post's own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here. Article content TOP STORY Article content Article content This month, one of the world's most well-known Canadian residents finalized his plans to leave Canada for good. Article content The term 'famous Canadian' almost always describes someone who no longer lives in the country of their birth. Neil Young, Justin Bieber, Malcolm Gladwell, Ryan Reynolds, Alanis Morrissette; all of them live full-time in the United States, and have done so for years. Article content Article content Until recently, Jordan Peterson was an exception. He could sell out stadiums in Europe and pen best-selling books in the United States, but his home base remained Toronto, where he retained his position as a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. Article content Article content But with Peterson officially putting his Toronto home up for sale as part of a permanent move to Arizona, he's effectively severing his last physical tie to Canada in what he's described as a ' painful parting.' Article content And news of the Peterson sale happened to break in the same week that another prominent figure announced that he was reluctantly abandoning his Canadian address. In a widely circulated op-ed for the National Post, Vancouver Jewish community leader Michael Sachs said he could no longer justify raising his family in Canada when the U.S. was an option. 'I have received multiple death threats over the last few years for advocating for my community. For my family, the luxury of patience has run out and our confidence in Canada's political leadership is gone,' he wrote. Article content Article content Both Peterson and Sachs have their own political reasons for leaving, but they're part of an accelerating trend. Canada has always struggled to stop capital and top talent from fleeing abroad, but what was once a steady trickle of people leaving may be ramping up. Article content In a Thursday social media post, the chief operating officer for Shopify, Kaz Nejatian, said he had multiple Jewish friends tell him their plans to leave. Article content 'They say they no longer feel safe sending their kids to school here,' he said. Article content That same day, the U.S.-based National Review profiled several Jewish Canadians who were either mulling a move to the U.S. for safety reasons, or had already done so. They included veteran Conservative political organizer Georgann Burke, who cited noticeable increases in both antisemitic hatred and anti-American hatred. 'I have received a series of really nasty emails. One was from someone who actually threatened to kill me,' she said. Article content Another, Toronto real estate developer Avi Glina, characterized Canada's steep rise in Jewish hate not as something distinct from the country's various economic ills, but a symptom of it. Article content 'Antisemitism is a symptom of a broken economy and nation state,' he said. Article content As far back as 2022, U.S. data was showing a noticeable spike in Canadians moving across the border. When that year's incoming Canadians were compared against outgoing Canadians, the U.S. Census Bureau determined that they had taken in a net 42,825 newcomers. It was the fastest growth in Canadian immigration they'd seen since 2013. Article content And Canada's own figures are also tracking a spike in departures. Article content In the first three months of 2025, Statistics Canada counted 27,086 emigrants permanently leaving the country. That's up from 25,394 in the first quarter of 2022. Article content Emigration figures include both citizens and permanent residents, so some of those departures may include recent immigrants who are ditching Canada for new horizons. Article content But regardless, it represents a near-unprecedented rate of established Canadians deciding they don't want to live here anymore. Article content 'Aside from a spike in 2017, this is the highest sustained outflow since the 1960s,' reads an analysis of the emigration figures by Better Dwelling. Article content Article content Over the 12 months preceding the April federal election, a total of 106,900 were added to the Canadian emigration rolls. On whatever day that Peterson finally left Canada for good, he would have been among about 300 Canadians doing the same. Article content Canada's chief weakness in retaining talent and money is economic. Article content In fields ranging from engineering to law, the average Canadian professional can not only make more money in the United States, but face dramatically lower housing prices and cost of living expenses. Article content The disparity has long been most obvious in the tech sector. In some years, the University of Waterloo's software engineering department has immediately lost up to 85 per cent of its graduates to jobs in the United States. Article content As one Canadian engineering student put it in a lengthy 2022 blog post about the Canadian brain drain, ''Cali or bust' and 'US or bust' are common terms I heard throughout my undergrad in engineering.' Article content The two countries used to be much more comparable for housing and wages, but the last 10 years have seen U.S. per-capita GDP surge ahead of Canada, while Canadian housing unaffordability has simultaneously surged ahead of the U.S. Article content Article content And if Canada's economy is scaring away people, it's also scaring away money. A Thursday update by Statistics Canada confirmed that both Canadian and foreign investors have been feverishly divesting from the Canadian economy, with $83.9 billion having been divested from Canadian securities in just the last four months. Article content According to Statistics Canada, a lot of that divested money was being poured into the United States instead. Article content One of the most illuminating polls from Canada's current trade war with the United States was a January survey finding that four in 10 Canadian young people would vote to dissolve their country if it meant that they could receive U.S. citizenship. Article content The question was whether respondents would vote for Canada to become a part of the United States provided the U.S. 'offered all Canadians full U.S. citizenship and a full conversion of the Canadian dollar and all personal financial assets into US dollars.' Article content The cohort that liked the idea more than anyone else was Canadians under 34; 43 per cent said they would trade their country's sovereignty for such a deal.
Toronto Sun
17-07-2025
- Sport
- Toronto Sun
The first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound dies in crash in Italy, city's mayor says
Member of Eagles' Super Bowl championship team dead at 38 after battling rare cancer Nude photo leak meant to be 'distraction' from political goals, McGregor says Young tennis pro allegedly shot and killed by father in fit of jealously Jordan Peterson lists Toronto home for $2.2 million as he heads to the U.S. The first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound dies in crash in Italy, city's mayor says Photo by Felipe Dana, File / AP Photo Article content MILAN — Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner, the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound during a 24-mile leap through the stratosphere more than a decade ago, died in a crash Thursday along the eastern coast of Italy, according to an official where the crash occurred. He was 56. Advertisement 2 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account or Sign in without password View more offers Article content Italian firefighters who responded said a paraglider crashed into the side of a swimming pool in the city of Porto Sant Elpidio. Article content Recommended Videos tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or The first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound dies in crash in Italy, city's mayor says Back to video tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Play Video Article content The city's mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, confirmed Baumgartner's death in a social media post. 'Our community is deeply affected by the tragic disappearance of Felix Baumgartner, a figure of global prominence, a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flight,' the mayor said. Baumgartner, known as 'Fearless Felix,' stunned the world in 2012 when he became the first human to break the sound barrier with only his body. He wore a pressurized suit and jumped from a capsule hoisted more than 24 miles (39 kilometers) above Earth by a giant helium balloon over New Mexico. The Austrian, who was part of the Red Bull Stratos team, topped out at 843.6 m.p.h. — the equivalent of 1.25 times the speed of sound — during a nine-minute descent. Your Midday Sun Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. There was an error, please provide a valid email address. Sign Up By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Thanks for signing up! A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Your Midday Sun will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Article content Advertisement 3 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content 'When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do not think about of breaking records anymore, you do not think of about gaining scientific data. The only thing you want is to come back alive,' he said after landing in the eastern New Mexico desert. The altitude he jumped from also marked the highest-ever for a skydiver, shattering the previous record set in 1960 by Joe Kittinger, who served as an adviser to Baumgartner during his feat. Baumgartner's altitude record stood for two years until Google executive Alan Eustace set new marks for the highest free-fall jump and greatest free-fall distance. In 2012, millions watched YouTube's livestream as Baumgartner coolly flashed a thumbs-up when he came out of the capsule high above Earth and then activated his parachute as he neared the ground, lifting his arms in victory after he landed. Advertisement 4 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Play Video He later said traveling faster than sound is 'hard to describe because you don't feel it.' 'Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are,' he said. — Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Article content Share this article in your social network Read Next
