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posted by martyb on Monday April 01 2019, @09:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-a-joke dept.

As mentioned here on March 26, Michael David Crawford has passed away. One person in the SoylentNews community was concerned that MDC might, instead, be incapacitated and in a hospital somewhere. He spent a few hours calling around and reported back to me:

Just got off the phone with the Clark County medical examiner
"I can confirm that a Michael Crawford died on March 24th"

Further, we received news that there is an obituary page up for him.

Separately, takyon suggested in a comment to that story:

Maybe we can put a quote or two of his in the quotations thing.

"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"I Am Eternally In Your Debt."
"The Mind Simply Reels."
"Thank You For Your Submission. Our customer service personnel will respond to your request in the order it was received."
etc.

Both TheMightyBuzzard and I ran with the idea and independently posted journal stories asking to gather up MDC sayings.

I am happy to inform the community that, as of 2019-03-31 04:20:00 UTC this morning, SoylentNews now has 31 fortunes attributed to MDC in our fortune rotation. Note: fortunes are chosen at random from all of the fortunes we have, so this represents a very small fraction of those available. Point being that it could be quite a while before you actually see one pop up.

Now that I know how to create and update fortune files, it should be simple to add any additional quotes people suggest. Continue to post any sayings of his to either of those journal articles (with a link to the source for verification, please!) In another week or so, I'll take another look through and update the fortune file as needed.

[Updated 2019-04-02 18:29:28 UTC. MDC quotations can be provided us posting a comment to my journal entry or to TMB's Journal entry. Please provide a link to the source so we can validate it is genuine. Thanks. --martyb]


Original Submission

Related Stories

Michael David Crawford Passes Away 168 comments

Mike Crawford Is Dead, Contributed to Mac System 7.5.X and Activist

Some of you might know him on the west coast. He worked for Apple fixing/debugging System 7.5.X and attended Cal Tech. He was an activist for the mentally ill and homeless. He was openly bisexual and open about his schizoaffective disorder. His Facebook page.

I had helped him with his project Soggy Jobs which is unfinished. It was his project he needed a business model for.

He was on CNN about the taking away of tax credit from software engineers.

His website is here.

He was a member here at Hacker News.

He had serious physical illnesses that made him suffer and he took his own life.

I was an online friend of his, and I too suffer from schizoaffective disorder.

His wish was not to be forgotten to be remembered through his works. To at least have a Wikipedia article written on him or some other Wiki. Wikipedia named him non-notable about ten years ago. But if you met him, he'd always show you respect and even if he disagreed with you he was nice about it.

takyon: Here is MDC's last post on Warp Life, and Last Will And Testament. User page. Twitter.


Original Submission

This Day in SoylentNews History: Anniversary of Michael David Crawford Passing Away 31 comments

Maybe the eds or someone already have something planned for the anniversary of MDC's death, or maybe the Coronavirus pandemic has overshadowed everything. I checked the subs queue and didn't see anything about MDC.

I'm sorry I don't have anything proper to submit, just a link to last year's article:
Michael David Crawford Passes Away.

His wish was not to be forgotten to be remembered through his works.

FWIW, I'm not the same AC who submitted that one; just a long-time /. & SN reader who was sincerely saddened by the news of MDC's death.

[Ed. addition follows. --martyb]

As a token of respect and thanks for his active participation on SoylentNews, staff updated our Subscribe page to facilitate making a site subscription in his memory. From Meta: Site News: Holiday Weekend, Staffing, Outage, Finances, Submissions, and Moderations (emphasis added):

When you subscribe, some of the site limits are relaxed and you get a shiny star next to any comments you post. For the humble, you can turn that star's display off in your preferences.

If you wish to help out, click on Subscribe and select whether you want the subscription to start/extend your own subscription or you wish to make a gift subscription. If it is a gift subscription, specify the UID for the recipient. The default of UID==6 is that of Michael Casadevall (another nick NCommander used when setting up the site) or you may replace the UID with 2339 in memory of Michael David Crawford, or any other UID that you want.

Penultimately, select a subscription duration and amount (the suggested amount is a minimum; any in excess of that is greatly appreciated), and click on the Continue button. NOTE: Javascript needs to have been enabled for the following step to work. Lastly, choose your payment method of either Paypal or Stripe, fill in the requested details, and submit.

As I have mentioned before, this site has real expenses with server hosting fees, domain name registration, paying for a CPA to file our taxes, and the like. Those who support us financially help "keep the lights on." Thank You!

Many years ago I came upon a definition that I believe embodies how MDC lived his life: "Honest is the absence of the intent to deceive." He set a very high bar that, though I try, do not know that I will be able to maintain the openness that I saw him exhibit.

Lastly, I find it timely that a fortune I saw on our site this morning seems apropos to his life:

So live that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

He may not have been faultless (who is?), but I am sure he would have no fears about what might be revealed by selling "the family parrot."

Previously:
Meta: Site News: Holiday Weekend, Staffing, Outage, Finances, Submissions, and Moderations
'This is how expensive it is to attempt suicide': Patient's bill goes viral
MDC Fortunes
Michael David Crawford Passes Away
Depression Strongly Correlated with Taking Three or More Common Drugs Simultaneously


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2) by Shimitar on Monday April 01 2019, @09:38AM (3 children)

    by Shimitar (4208) on Monday April 01 2019, @09:38AM (#823003) Homepage

    This news makes me sad. He was a strange and unique perspective and will be missed.

    --
    Coding is an art. No, java is not coding. Yes, i am biased, i know, sorry if this bothers you.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by kazzie on Monday April 01 2019, @09:43AM (2 children)

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 01 2019, @09:43AM (#823004)

      Yet, on the other hand, this news that he's now immortalised in the Soylent fortune file is rather pleasing.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @01:55AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @01:55AM (#823367)

        up. you don't know mdc.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by kazzie on Tuesday April 02 2019, @02:51AM

          by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 02 2019, @02:51AM (#823395)

          Not personally, no. But his comments often stood out to me (unsurprisingly) and I found myself trying to picture myself in his shoes / thought processes. That's something that hasn't happened with other outspoken members (such as Ethanol Fueled).

          Read into that what you will.

  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @09:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @09:51AM (#823006)

    Note: fortunes are chosen at random from all of the fortunes we have, so this represents a very small fraction of those available.

    You say that like it's a bad thing.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday April 01 2019, @10:43AM (10 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Monday April 01 2019, @10:43AM (#823013) Journal

    My fortunes are now stuck on
    You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth. -- Nicklaus Wirth

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday April 01 2019, @10:44AM (4 children)

      by Gaaark (41) on Monday April 01 2019, @10:44AM (#823015) Journal

      Nevermind... JUST changed after a LOT of Wirth.

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday April 01 2019, @10:44AM (3 children)

        by Gaaark (41) on Monday April 01 2019, @10:44AM (#823016) Journal

        Now it's back.
        Not joking.

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 4, Funny) by martyb on Monday April 01 2019, @10:56AM (1 child)

          by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 01 2019, @10:56AM (#823018) Journal

          You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth. -- Nicklaus Wirth

          So, what I'm hearing is that, at least for a while, your fortune was Wirthless?

          --
          Wit is intellect, dancing.
          • (Score: 1) by zoward on Monday April 01 2019, @06:14PM

            by zoward (4734) on Monday April 01 2019, @06:14PM (#823181)

            One of my college professors who was not a fan of Pascal said his name should be pronounced "Nickle's Worth".

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by DECbot on Monday April 01 2019, @01:19PM

          by DECbot (832) on Monday April 01 2019, @01:19PM (#823051) Journal

          I understand the fortunes were added to each page to gauge the staleness of of the varnish cache for any one page. Perhaps the cache for the pages you're looking at had some remarkable shelf life.

          --
          cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday April 01 2019, @05:04PM (4 children)

      by mhajicek (51) on Monday April 01 2019, @05:04PM (#823141)

      Where does one see these fortunes?

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 01 2019, @06:13PM (3 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 01 2019, @06:13PM (#823178) Journal

        Scroll to the very bottom of each page, and in the right bottom corner, there should be a quote of some sort.

        A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself. -- Du Bois

        I'll often get the same quote repeatedly, for maybe as much as half an hour. Then it changes. Sometimes silly, sometimes stupid, sometimes genuinely witty, sometimes even relevant to the discussion. I have on ocassion looked up a quote, to see WTF it was about.

        • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday April 01 2019, @06:27PM (2 children)

          by nitehawk214 (1304) on Monday April 01 2019, @06:27PM (#823187)

          That's odd, i just got that quote for this comments page.

          Or is it not odd and the same page gives the same quote for everyone?

          --
          "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 01 2019, @07:09PM (1 child)

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 01 2019, @07:09PM (#823213) Journal

            You'd probably have to ask the Buzzard how it works. My best guess, the server serves them up one at a time, and leaves them up for a period of time. Anyone who loads a page during that period gets that quote. I suppose someone could tweak them to have a shorter or a long shelf life.

            • (Score: 2, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Monday April 01 2019, @07:30PM

              by nitehawk214 (1304) on Monday April 01 2019, @07:30PM (#823228)

              Cool. I kind of like the idea that many of us are seeing the same quote at the same time.

              --
              "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @11:41AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @11:41AM (#823030)

    Can we get a link to the fortune file? I'd like to add MDC to my local fortune files.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Monday April 01 2019, @12:24PM

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 01 2019, @12:24PM (#823037) Journal

      Can we get a link to the fortune file? I'd like to add MDC to my local fortune files.

      That sounds like a reasonable request. All of the entries were taken from public posts of his, so there's nothing "sensitive" about them.

      That said, and as requested in this very story, we are looking for additional contributions for the file and will make updates in the next week or two.

      Will revisit making it available, and how to do so, then.

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday April 01 2019, @11:50AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Monday April 01 2019, @11:50AM (#823032) Homepage Journal

    Thanks...nice tribute...

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @12:04PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @12:04PM (#823033)

    http://www.warplife.com/mdc/legacy/estate/last-will-and-testament/2019-03-20.html [warplife.com]

    Soylent News owns his business interests

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @12:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @12:09PM (#823035)

      It looks like I misread that. SN gets his copyrights.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Monday April 01 2019, @03:11PM

      by Whoever (4524) on Monday April 01 2019, @03:11PM (#823096) Journal

      Does a signed and witnessed copy of that will exist? Otherwise it's meaningless.

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday April 01 2019, @11:57PM (1 child)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday April 01 2019, @11:57PM (#823327) Journal

    I posted this in one of the other stories on the page--how about an annual nethack session in his honor, or adding a story category of "MDC" to cover News of the Weird-style stories, or an "MDC" moderation option for a wild, oddball post?

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @01:16AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @01:16AM (#823347)

      I would get behind an "MDC - mental wellness, creative writing, coding, astrophysics, and society's treatment of the downtrodden: choose two" category, for complex issues. Mike was a complex guy! That phrasing is awkwardly long but maybe that's also subject-appropriate.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @01:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @01:12AM (#823345)

    Thanks so much martyb. MDC didn't get money from the people who wrote thanking him saying he prevented their suicides; I won't send you money for keeping shards of his outlook alive; thank you nonetheless.

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