Stories About My Brother
jezebel.com
jezebel.com
> “He wrote a white paper on cryptocurrency and why Ethereum was going to skyrocket,” my dad told me. “A number of his friends became rich off of him.”
> None of us know how much Yush made, or where the bitcoin is now, but through his investments, he was able to bankroll at least $50,000 per month on running his new start-up, his former business partner, Nate Argetsinger, told me. Susan Farrington, a former CMU administrator and so-called “college mom” to Yush, told me that when she was between jobs, Yush suspected that she might be struggling.
> He called her up one day and said, “By my calculations, you are probably having some financial difficulties by now.” After much persistence, he transferred $10,000 worth of bitcoin to Farrington. “Honestly nobody has done anything like that for me,” she told me as her voice cracked. “It made him happy.”
Almost certainly the secrets died unrecoverably with him.
Inheriting money is the worst possible thing if you believe societies should be meritocracies.
People more exposed to the traditions and practices of securing wealth for posterity will do so with cryptocurrencies, and others get no aid in avoiding the lose of everything. It just serves to reinforce what was, no merit required.
Moving essay, and I feel for her loss. It does leave me thinking of him as an enigma, though, and I can't help but wonder why. Yes, he was an enigma to her by the time he died. But she interviewed lots of people who were active in his life when he died and has pretty much nothing to relay on from them. Did they really have no opinions of him? Did he leave no records or discussions of why, exactly, he wanted limb lengthening surgery?
And he wrote and published an essay about her family, presumably discussing his feelings about her, but she didn't feel fit to link it? While at the same time thought it was worth the space to dig up an ancient email of his that references another website, from which she feels the need to quote an unrelated passage?
This essay seems much more interested in pigeonholing his tragic death into a rubric of "victim of hateful white supremacist MRA thought" instead of allowing him his own voice. She should consider, perhaps, that responsibility for his death might fall on broader social trends instead of relying on simplistic explanations pointing to a maligned sect which it's unclear he even adhered to when he died.
This is a strange opener given that the embolism was related to the limb lengthening. Not quite a bolt of lightening from the blue
Eh, sort of. This reads to me like a long-winded explanation as to why her brother was smart in many ways but really too dumb to see that he was wrong about the source of his insecurity, that the true cause for all of his grief was not only completely outside the control of her tribe of identity, that it was actually a common enemy that she continues to battle.
Was he? He critically appraised the evidence: height is proportional to various forms of success, and made a plan to get taller.
Sure one could convince themselves that it’s not a problem and be less successful for it on the metrics one cares about.
But that’s easier to do if you don’t have some void in life that seems hard to fill.
I’m into speculation here, but perhaps he lacked the intellectual breadth to consider other angles to what was going on. I find that technically successful people often think that complex social issues can be reduced to and solved as technical problems. That in my opinion misses huge amounts of complexity and nuance.
I don’t think it is correct to say he critically appraised the situation, at least sufficiently. Would we think the same if eg a black person sees that white people were more successful professionally and therefore resolved to whiten their skin? Would we all just say “sure, that’s what you’ve got to do!” and not wonder why they need to in the first place? Where should the change come from?
Of course, that said many people feel to need to conform to a situation while wanting it to be different. It’s messy. Height is a particularly odd case as it’s on the border of being an unchangeable physical characteristic. Maybe the real reason he wasn’t taken seriously was because of his race but he knew he couldn’t change that?
Short people, ugly people... these things definitely have a real effect on people's careers and lives and they'll be the last to get their 'social justice cause d'jour' moment.
The author says that herself:
> Research has shown that tall people are richer and more successful
Remember when the height of social justice activism was Prohibition?
It’s not my place to compare the many people clamouring for dignity, but I am pointing out that there is definitely an unwritten hierarchy in play here.
“How do you see” is admittedly not that clear. I just want to know what it is.
'How you see' was actually the clearest part of your post, the second half is what threw me off.
Short and ugly people have never been legally denied property rights on the basis of their shortness and ugliness, or denied the right the vote, or forced into segregated schools, or suffered police persecution.
I’m not denying that short and ugly people are at a disadvantage but it’s obviously on a very different scale to the above and not as a result of deliberate state policy.
What exactly is your problem with them being towards the bottom of this hierarchy?
In a world where the ideal man doesn't have to conform to the traditional stereotypes or masculinity (tall and strong), short people would have far fewer reasons to worry about their height, don't you think?
And the mere fact that women don't have to conform to similar expectations should tell one that the cause of short people is very much tied to breaking up sex stereotypes and roles that we have today.
Would you disagree?
I do agree that in general the loosening of the shackles of societal expectation will make space for changes, but I don't think it would actually have an appreciable effect.
I can't help but feel that even through a tragedy, the author still hasn't budged from her side of views.
no and no.
> In what direction do you think she needs to budge
One in which the author does not assume her brother should blame a greater system of patriarchy and white supremacy.
Interestingly the USSR used to be known for limb lengthening surgery, although I heard it was very much in a Soviet tradition.
I'm insecure about my looks because I'm happier when I see attractive people and I know I can't give other people that happiness.
What makes you think these two can be cleanly separated?
> The social structure that results is emergent, not designed.
... yes, and the undesigned structure that has emerged we are labelling "patriarchy".
> the social structure of humanity is based on genetic necessity
... requires a lot more unpacking. Is this asserting that culture doesn't exist and material conditions are irrelevant? All behaviour is only genetic? I don't think that's what you're claiming, but I can't parse it otherwise.
Definitely. It feels like there's a difference in our interpretation of the context of the word "patriarchy". I have most often heard it used as a condemnation of a group of individuals who are also disadvantaged by the social structure. Similar to the way "idealism" is commonly used to disparage positive future thinking.
I would sure rather a society where no one has to feel like they're in a fight for survival where the only way to win is someone else losing.
Patriarchy hurts men too!
He said "One in which the author does not assume her brother should blame a greater system of patriarchy and white supremacy."
My interpretation was that the person was not affected by the racism or the society norms and the author is wrong, I pointed out that her stories about the racism and the rest are confirmed by statistics, so I am not sure why the OP is so sure that the author is wrong, does he have more information?
Yes the article is subjective and the author can be wrong but a random guy wants to disprove the author because his political views disagree with the author.
Sometimes one side is just right. Compromise isn't always appropriate.
I certainly see value in a greater understanding of the alternative perspective, but not in accepting it if you disagree.
We spend a lot of time reading or watching fictional stories but I always enjoy reading about real life stories, things that most of the time are not told, try to empathize with the people in the story etc.
Something tells me that the author of this article wouldn't exactly be thrilled to come across her brother's posts on lookism or reddit. She should be grateful that she can't find anything.
> And I learned that he had written an anonymous essay about our family published in a Men’s Rights anthology, in which he lamented over a society that values the “emotional pain” of women over the burden men have to provide for them. He complained that women were inferior in logical ability, and that women in abusive relationships are not held accountable for their decision to stay, while pressures upon men are overlooked and ignored.
> After his death, my dad shared an email with me in which Yush had cited the deeply misogynistic Red Pill constitution—a manifesto that claims “Feminism is nothing more than a female supremacy movement posing as one of humanist egalitarianism”—as relevant commentary on psychology and sociology.