Re: Ian Murdock
codefriar.com
codefriar.com
As the author stated, we don't know what happened. But it does seem that people, like Ian (and Aaron Swartz), who dedicated their lives to improving systems for the greater good tend to have a defiant sensitivity to abuses of power.
The world needs people like that alive and kicking for as long as possible. Sometimes it takes an unfathomable amount of persistence to get things moving in the right direction, but it can and does happen if you don't give up.
Almost 20 years ago my father answered the phone as we ate a late family dinner. He was mightily confused because the man on the other end of the call was asking him questions he had no idea how t answer. After a few moments of confusion, my father told the man, he was pretty sure he wanted his son, Kevin, not him.
On the other end waited Ian Murdock. He’d taken the time to call me up to do my Debian maintainer identity interview. It was, and is, a big deal, from a security standpoint, to verify the identity of new Debian maintainers. But the task is tedious, calling up new maintainers and talking to them for half an hour. Imagine my surprise, when, the man doing my interview was the Ian from debian. One of the co-founders of the entire project had taken the time to call me. I was Impressed.
Years later, I got to meet Ian in person at an ExactTarget conference, and I thanked him for calling a nerdy high school kid to verify his identity. He not only confirmed my identity for security purposes, but he affirmed that I mattered, and could help. At the time, I don’t think he remembered the call, and I don’t think I was sufficiently able to convey what his call meant to me.
Last Monday, Ian Murdock was found dead in his home. The details are few, the speculation rampant. Police may or may not be involved. The proximate cause might have been Suicide. Was his Twitter account hacked? Regardless of the details, I’m reminded that all too often our culture judges people by their actions in the worst moments of their life. Those who have killed are forever murderers branded by their actions at the worst moments of their life. We don’t seem to have a cultural construct for good people who made mistakes. Not where suicide or the police are concerned. I’ve already started to see Ian eulogized not for his contributions to the world, but as a “crazy” and someone who gave up. I don’t know how Ian died, it’s likely you don’t either. It doesn’t matter; Ian was more, is more, than the unknown actions at the end of his life. He was also the kind of man who’d not only call and verify my identity, but reaffirm an insecure high school nerd’s ability to meaningfully contribute to the world at large.
To Ian, Thank you for all that you were and did.
The ability to include code in a release of widely-used software involves a large amount of trust, and for a distributed, volunteer project, you don't get the checks that either a long personal relationship or a formal employment background check would give you. This puts you at risk of, as Juniper so eloquently put it recently, "unauthorized code".
The little book icon isn't always there, and anyway I generally like the result of turning off CSS anyway, it looks very nineties and I can just see the faintest outline of a middle finger.
What kills me is that a basic 90's HTML 3 page can be zoomed and scrolled on mobile browser. If you don't care too much about fancy design (eg for personal sites), then just use HTML and really basic, or no, CSS. If you do care about sophisticated design, then you should ensure it works on the most common browsers and devices.
I think it's darkly hilarious: it's uncomfortable to read text which is a full screen width, so sites waste 50% of the browser window in order to give readers reasonably-wide text — but they waste that 50% of the window even when it is already reasonably-sized.
Well said man, I think that remembering him because he
> was also the kind of man who’d not only call and verify my identity, but reaffirm an insecure high school nerd’s ability to meaningfully contribute to the world at large.
Is an excellent form of memorial. This is my favorite post about the guy, who was not on my radar before this week. (Though, I have used Debian and regularly use Ubuntu.)
I never knew him, but I'm still very saddened by this loss.
I don't know what happened, and I ask myself why it could have went so wrong. Is the despair and feeling of injustice that much larger when you are an idealist?
The feeling is what the feeling is when you're deep in the shit. Idealist, mentor, nice guy, none of that matters. He was a man in crisis and didn't come out the other end. Maybe we'll know why some day.
It's not clear whom in the US to recommend people contact in such a situation.
No less than four people who are close to me have sought help through official channels in the US, and in all four cases, were treated disastrously. All of them (including one who was 15 at the time) have told me they'd never, ever do that again.
(Actually, I just thought of another - someone whom someone around them "called for help." Same scenario. So that's five.)
There is a lot not to like about emergency mental health care. The experience is indeed akin to that of criminal justice, and can at times verge on dehumanizing. Our handling of these issues must improve.
But the alternative to being locked in a room with police officers watching the door is something far worse than that.
People with suicidal depression, severe anxiety disorders, or post-traumatic stress disorders can endure episodes where they almost completely lose judgement, or experience dissociation and derealization. You can't simply gut these things out: you need to be in a safe space, ideally attended to by professionals who can intervene medically during the worst of it.
If you are feeling suicidal, or that you're not in control of your own actions and concerned about harming yourself or others, you should call 9-1-1 or go to a hospital ER. It won't be pleasant, but it will be safer than the alternatives.
This seems like a false dichotomy to me.
Having said that: if you were my friend, and you told me you felt like you weren't in control of your thoughts and were concerned you might harm yourself, and you had no better options lined up (a long term mental health expert you'd built a relationship with, for instance), I'd help coerce you into the emergency mental health care system before I allowed you to become a victim of a controllable illness.
You may think that this is coldly logical. It's not. I have dealt with OCD and depression-like systems for a long time now. 90%+ of the time I'm "fine" to "great." Another 9.9% I feel like scum for no good reason. That last 0.1% is what sucks -- that's the suicidal thoughts.
Holidays that are the worst, when everybody seems to be paying each other extra attentions and I find myself feeling lonely/forgotten. Last night, I had raging suicidal thoughts for a few hours (about the length of the usual bout). These thoughts are not directed or particularly purposeful.
When I have these thoughts, I badly want to talk to somebody about them. It's like the monster in your closet -- in the light of day it's less scary. But I can't, and it sucks! If I go to a shrink about this, I would likely be involuntarily committed and be greatly impacted in my professional life, etc.
Suicide is a taboo topic and it's too bad for those who struggle with suicidal thoughts, because they have to keep them inside. I've brought them up to some "friends" before and the reaction is that I must be crumbling, etc. There's almost a sense of shame from these people, like they've accidentally seen you naked.
I keep this to myself, but the most productive thing is to confront the issue. The best way I've been able to do that is by reading things written by/about suicide not from the perspective of "gotta save you!" This might sound odd, but places like /r/SanctionedSuicide (which isn't really what it sounds like, if you recoiled) actually makes me feel respected and not ashamed. Looking through a different lens, I see that my life is pretty good and I have many things to live for! When I feel this way I read the generally "gotta save you!" stuff too because hey, it's nice and positive, but in isolation it's quite patronizing.
Mentally sound people seem to immediately equate suicidal thoughts with an imminent life-and-death struggle and have the accompanying "EMERGENCY!!" reaction, and that is simply not how this works.
I agree with you that these are serious problems. But you're still much better off dealing with them than being dead. This post is very unhelpful.
And yes, I agree, if you feel suicidal you should definitely get help, including 911 if your crisis is immediate.
So, in your mind, we're not even allowed to discuss this problem?
You call 911 for help, and they send someone with a gun.
If you ask to be committed, you remain in control and can get help. If you are not in a condition to admit yourself, the only way to deprive you of your civil rights in the US, even for your own safety, is the police.
But if you have to ask whether you should admit yourself to a hospital, do it. If you admit yourself voluntarily, you'll have the option to leave within days, and during those days, you won't have to worry as much about the consequences of your own actions, which by itself can help clear your head.
This compares to the 35,000 to 40,000 people who die by suicide in the US each year.
If someone needs help there are probably things you can do - be there with them; make sure you say they're calm when you talk about them on the phone; make sure there are no weapons around.
Data on race, mental health, etc.
It's an incredibly useful data set; take a month or two and a pair of specific areas and tally the data up. I learned a bunch. For instance: tasers? Way the fuck more dangerous than I thought (and I didn't think they were benign before).
It does nobody any good to sugarcoat the unpleasantness. The experience of the emergency mental health process, or stories about it, shock people. That shock deters many from seeking help. So people should know up-front, preferably before they even need to consider emergency care, that getting care will suck a lot.
It also has a good chance at saving their lives.
There probably aren't many people on HN who will agree more strenuously than I do that emergency mental health care in the US needs a drastic overhaul, and that's a conversation I'm willing to have. But we cannot responsibly suggest that we can motivate that reform by telling the mentally ill to go on strike against the system. Many people in need of emergency mental care will return to normal function in days or weeks, even when the safe space that gives them room to recover is unpleasant, the doctors are remote and unhelpful, and the police are at the door.
† (There are subtle differences between this outcome and "involuntary commitment", but I would understand anyone who suggested that they're distinctions without differences; perhaps the best term to use for this would be "temporary involuntary commitment").
I will personally never contact the authorities myself. My experience was so bad that I contacted the NSW health ombudsman and the hospital apologised for: not charting my regular medication; treating me dismissively; not providing enough bedclothes during a wet and freezing night; not providing safe facilities (water ringing through light bulbs, leaking roofs, etc) and for staff who bullied me whilst I was in the facility.
I sobt need to know this, but I'm guessing you've been fortunate enough to have never been involved with state run, coercive mental health systems. There are good and valid reasons why people avoid them like the plague. They are often worse than the cure.
Second, I am not an apologist for the emergency mental health care system. I agree with you about it for the most part, and I think it's me that introduced the word "dehumanizing" to the thread in describing it.
If I somehow got bit by a radioactive Zuckerberg and had unbounded funds to tackle public policy problems, emergency mental health care is the one I'd tackle.
Third, it is absolutely not my contention that anyone dealing with any kind or level of suicidality should admit themselves to emergency care. Suicidality, depression, and anxiety are complicated subjects and --- I strongly agree with everyone else who's said this --- they're also taboo issues that millions of people struggle with quietly and without institutional "help".
My contention is merely this:
IFF you find yourself in circumstances where you have lost control of your thoughts or have impeded judgement to the point where you or a trusted friend are immediately and urgently concerned that you might harm yourself, THEN it is much better to submit yourself to the almost invariably unpleasant and often dehumanizing emergency mental health care process than to try to gut it out alone.
This is especially true of sudden onset problems like PTSD. Severe PTSD is a motherfucker of an illness and if you don't have the experience and self-knowledge to handle it yourself (and many sufferers do not, since it tends to come at you out of nowhere), you shouldn't try.
I agree, and this is the kind of discussion that should be had.
> But we cannot responsibly suggest that we can motivate that reform by telling the mentally ill to go on strike against the system.
To be clear, I am not at all suggesting that. I am observing that there is a barrier in front of some people to getting help, fear of the system. People are already on strike or hesitant, to more or less degrees, and I think it's terrible that fear of help is even a consideration.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SWResources/comments/1c3p3z/helpful...
i've always found it useful that those guys keep an updated list handy.