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Dedicated to Ian Murdock

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Re: Dedicated to Ian Murdock

#31

Post by overcast »

wongmjane wrote: post #17
jordigh wrote: post #6

What the heck actually happened to Ian? He's going to be my own personal "Elvis/Tupac is alive" brand of conspiracy theorising (not really, but I expect we'll never really know what actually happened). At any rate, happy exclusive Debian user here for the past 15 years. Thank you, Ian, gone too soon. Your name lives on in half the name of my most belovèd OS.

This were his last tweets if you really want to know the context... https://pastebin.com/yk8bgru5

Dude definitely had some demons in his head. Ramblings of a mad man.

Re: Dedicated to Ian Murdock

#34

Post by freehunter »

serf wrote: post #25
freehunter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make sure everyone is aware, the original post (before it was flagged) said "fuck the police" and then linked Ian's twitter history and some LiveLeak video I didn't watch. To put it in context, Ian said he was abused by the police for knocking on his neighbor's door, and then threatened to commit suicide. He later retracted the statement, but then actually followed through and hung himself until he was dead. I sup…

I don't disagree with anything you've said, and I think that it's important that people seek help, but I think there is one more important aspect that you left out. Much of his (online) social circle completely dropped away from him due to what they perceived as his use of bigoted racist language, not because they perceived him as having a temporary lapse in judgement or breakdown. They (the 'twitterverse') did judge…

>Much of his (online) social circle completely dropped away from him due to what they perceived as his use of bigoted racist language, not because they perceived him as having a temporary lapse in judgement or breakdown. They (the 'twitterverse') did judge him.

Not to excuse the behavior of those who judged him, but the ideal would be to get help before it gets to this point.

If I have a stomach bug, I would hope to get treatment before vomiting all over my food. I would fully expect my dinner guests to be disgusted by my outburst, it's only natural. I have had athlete friends who I have treated to lunch after an intense sporting event and had them vomit in the middle of the restaurant, and I don't blame anyone near us for getting up and leaving. It's not pleasant to see.

Saying "I'm not feeling well and I am getting help" is a lot easier to do before you've proven that fact. After you've had a racist outburst is the time when it's too late to save face. It's not too late to get help for sure, but at that point you're already going to suffer some repercussions.

No one should be blamed for getting help, but likewise no one should be blamed for not sticking by you when you refuse to get that help. It's a two-way street. No one who matters will judge you for getting help, but society will certainly judge you for anything do you do/say before you seek that assistance.

Re: Dedicated to Ian Murdock

#35

Post by jacquesm »

overcast wrote: post #31
wongmjane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This were his last tweets if you really want to know the context... https://pastebin.com/yk8bgru5

Dude definitely had some demons in his head. Ramblings of a mad man.

I'm not going to call judgment on any of this. I've seen totally rational and very 'cool' (as in, hard to perturb) people go from their normal happy self to strapped down on a stretcher in the space of 48 very long hours. People can be under absolutely immense pressure and not show it until something hits them at the wrong angle, or some tiny blood vessel in the brain decides it's had enough.

Crystals are like that too: along one axis you can up the pressure to incredible values and nothing will even show to indicate something is up, then you tap them lightly along another axis and boom, nothing but dust left.

Things that can trigger this kind of episode besides the obvious medical causes are simultaneous crisis in relationships, financial situation (probably not here) and professional life. Other ways in which it can happen are bad drug trips and many other ways besides.

Yet another option is that there is real substance to Ians claims about police brutality but he could have done a lot better if he wanted to make that claim and make it stick. All in all an extremely sad affair where I'm fairly sure we'll never know the real root cause, all we can do is keep our eyes open for repeats of such patterns in the people near to us and to hopefully react in time when we see them.

Re: Dedicated to Ian Murdock

#36

Post by angelo »

jacquesm wrote: post #12
fslkjhjdfhgj4j wrote: post #9

Fuck the police: http://archive.is/vBS6N https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7aa_1451521842 In memory of Ian, who gave his life for our freedoms

It wasn't that simple or clear cut.

You refuse to acknowledge the police aspect. San Francisco police carry themselves unlike police in the Netherlands. It was a huge part of Ian's demise. That and HN censoring a post linking to his cries for help.

It was days after Christmas. It sounds like his wife and daughters were not a part of it. He was mixing benzos and alcohol. He was not in a good place.

He wasn't trying to break into his neighbors home. He was confused. Quite probably too out of it to know better. Police respond to a "violent burglar". Police in the states have shown a clear propensity to exacerbate situations like this rather than diffuse the situation.

So the police brutalized him when he didn't get on his knees and his community turned their back on him with the act of one man's wand of censorship.

And you reference a 90's film about a man that goes on a streak of violence that involved at least one bazooka if I recall correctly..

Stop. Please stop. So cold.

Re: Dedicated to Ian Murdock

#37

Post by [deleted] »

Waterluvian wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #11

There is this movie called 'Falling Down', when I heard about what happened to Ian I immediately associated it with the patterns in that movie. Very sad and it is a real pity that we lose these wonderful people to momentary lapses of judgment or a cascade of misery starting with some innocent little thing. There isn't a day that I get by without using software influenced by Ian and his role in all this is hard to ove…

That movie stunned me at his one moment of clarity. "I'm the bad guy?" We always need to look out for our friends. Many mental diseases, by definition, cannot be self diagnosed.

[deleted]

Re: Dedicated to Ian Murdock

#38

Post by angersock »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
overcast wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude definitely had some demons in his head. Ramblings of a mad man.

I'm not going to call judgment on any of this. I've seen totally rational and very 'cool' (as in, hard to perturb) people go from their normal happy self to strapped down on a stretcher in the space of 48 very long hours. People can be under absolutely immense pressure and not show it until something hits them at the wrong angle, or some tiny blood vessel in the brain decides it's had enough. Crystals are like that t…

Agreed on all counts. A particularly bad day or days can absolutely wreck a person, and until someone or somebody close to them has gone through the process there is really no explaining how real a thing it is.

In Ian's case, some combination of alcohol, depression, and police violence (seriously, go read the coroner's report) seems to be the cause.

What's entirely absurd is the number of people here who, hat in hand, are all too happy to say "well golly gee another terrible victim of mental health problems" and ignore the likely sexual abuse ("cavity search" in polite terms) that Ian suffered at the hands of the police.

If the same story happened here with !police, you can bet your ass that people here would be incensed and crying about how something must be done, but yet given what happened here everybody seems oddly okay with blaming the victim and spreading the vague explanation of mental health.

That's not right, that's not justice, and that's not what we should be doing.

Then again, it's a lot easier than realizing how fucked the system has become while we've been screwing around in startupcanistan.

Re: Dedicated to Ian Murdock

#39

Post by shykes »

A small anecdote in memory of Ian. When he joined Docker it was to help us make the platform more open and community-friendly. He died before completing his project and we've done our best to continue it in the way he would have wanted. We finally launched it, over a year late, under the name Moby. That name was Ian's idea too.

We initially wanted to publicly dedicate the Moby launch to him, but decided against it, because we didn't want to give the impression that we were cynically using his name to help our launch succeed.

It makes me very happy that this release of Debian is dedicated to him. It's hard to describe the shock of losing a colleague so brutally in the middle of a mind meld, when you're so intensely focused on building something together. It still haunts me.

Re: Dedicated to Ian Murdock

#40

Post by tritium »

jacquesm wrote: post #11

There is this movie called 'Falling Down', when I heard about what happened to Ian I immediately associated it with the patterns in that movie. Very sad and it is a real pity that we lose these wonderful people to momentary lapses of judgment or a cascade of misery starting with some innocent little thing. There isn't a day that I get by without using software influenced by Ian and his role in all this is hard to ove…

You mean you really don't suspect that Ian Murdock was murdered in a manner consistent with the appearance of suicide?
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