Staffing: We are fortunate at SoylentNews to have some extremely talented and hard-working people on our staff. It bears mentioning that all work done on the site is by volunteers — nobody has ever received any payment for any of the work done here. That includes maintaining the code, wrangling IRC (Internet Relay Chat), maintaining our e-mail servers, the databases, web servers, etc. It also covers editing community story submissions and posting them to the site as stories for the community to read and comment on.
So, it pains me to report that one of our staff has been having health issues and was in the hospital in February. The initial "event" has been handled, but one of the tests conducted there revealed another matter which is requiring some ongoing intervention. There's other IRL (In Real Life) stuff happening, as well. As he put it: "All in all 2019 is starting out as a major suck of a year."
I have instructed him to take whatever time he needs to take care of things — first things first.
I am sure this attention is somewhat embarrassing to him, but if I have learned anything at all from MDC's passing, is the wisdom behind this saying
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Please join me in wishing a full, and speedy, recovery to Fnord666.
Finances: As alluded to above, it does take real money to run this site (paying for servers, domain registration, and filing taxes are the major expenses). Having just finished the first quarter of the year, I'm pleased to announce that subscriptions to the site have so far been on a trajectory to meet our funding goal for the first half of the year. As of this writing, we have raised $1143 towards a goal of $2000. Most people make ad hoc, one-time contributions. The amounts presented for the different durations are suggested minimums. The majority of contributions received are at the minimum suggested amount, but so far this year we have some generous contributions above that. We had 2 people at $200 (each), one at $100, one at $80, and a couple more at $25. We accept both PayPal and Stripe for payment processing. We do provide an option, should you so wish, to contribute a gift subscription. By default, we use UID #6 as the recipient, though you are free to choose any user on the site. If you run into any problems or have any questions, please post a comment here, post something on IRC, or send an e-mail to admin (at) soylentnews.org and someone will get back to you presently.
What it gets you is a shiny star next to your name whenever you post a comment (which you can toggle on/off in your preferences), some relaxed restrictions on the site, and knowledge that you are helping us continue to provide a unique venue for discussion with a primary focus on science and technology. And, need I say it? Buck Feta! I find it hard to believe it has been over five years since this site forked off from Slashdot, and we have remained advertising-free the whole time!
Thanks: Many, many thanks to all who have subscribed!
If you would like to subscribe or to check your subscription status, please click to go to our subscription page.
Again, please accept my deep and genuine thanks to all who have contributed to this site in any way. Above all, please keep those story submissions coming, moderate comments, and (of course) post new comments, too!
--martyb
Related Stories
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.
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.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 01 2019, @04:18PM (1 child)
Enjoy this place too much to not support it, pitiful as my amount can be at the moment. (Long overdue for me, personally.)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 01 2019, @05:45PM
And, sorry, I do with a speedy recovery to....
... wait, why am I vaguely uneasy? I think there was somebody having some physical trouble, whom I don't know all that well, but I did hope gets well soon.
Hmm... now I remember it was....
... hmmmm. I suppose I should go off and do other things now.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by drussell on Monday April 01 2019, @04:27PM (3 children)
I hope Fnord666 is in a locale where he can get any medical attention he requires...
As to any potentially "somewhat embarrassing attention," I tend to have the attitude that acknowledging problems or asking for help in any endeavor is a sign of strength, not weakness.
I wish more people saw things that way...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @08:08PM (2 children)
Let me guess...
The initial event was that he got high, stripped, painted himself with mayonnaise, and was found skateboarding in circles around an In-N-Out. He got tased by the police, fell off the skateboard, and rolled down a hill. This left his balls on top of a hornet nest.
The tests revealed that he has an eating disorder involving hair and small metal objects. He contains numerous large masses of hair-wrapped metal objects that have gotten stuck inside his gut.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:48AM (1 child)
Oh my, that situation sounds like it would be quite a pickle...
...however, I rather doubt that is the precise circumstance in this particular case...
Good guess and nice try!? Although, I suppose you never know! ;-)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday April 02 2019, @06:13AM
> Oh my, that situation sounds like it would be quite a pickle...
Is that like a McPickle? https://nypost.com/2019/04/01/mcdonalds-mcpickle-joke-for-april-fools-day-backfires/ [nypost.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 01 2019, @05:21PM (3 children)
If the reaper comes calling, just tell him you don't have permission to leave yet. That should work!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @06:18PM (2 children)
--Emily Dickinson
*Sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @01:45AM (1 child)
It also works with the theme from Gilligan's Island.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:26AM
Now sit right back and you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship
The mate was a mighty sailing man
The skipper brave and sure
Five passengers set sail that day on a three hour tour
A three hour tour
The weather started getting rough
The tiny ship was tossed
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Minnow would be lost
The Minnow would be lost
The ship's aground on the shore of this
Uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan!
The skipper too!
The millionaire and his wife
The movie star
The professor and Mary Ann
Here on Gilligan's Isle...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @05:32PM
get well soon, fnordy!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by JediTrainer on Monday April 01 2019, @06:22PM (1 child)
Best wishes, Fnord. Sorry to hear that the start of the year has been so rough and I hope you're getting all of the support that you need to get through this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @01:18AM
2nd'ed and a tip of the hat to the Illuminatus! where I first came across fnords.
(Score: 1) by zoward on Monday April 01 2019, @06:28PM (12 children)
When donating, I noticed they always default the gift subscriptions to UID #6. Who is UID #6?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday April 01 2019, @07:10PM
IIRC it is an NCommander alt account or something like that.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 01 2019, @07:24PM (10 children)
Feel free to go for 2339 (MDC) as well.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday April 01 2019, @11:34PM (5 children)
I dunno if anyone else has suggested this already, but it seems we should memorialize MDC somehow. We've done nethack sessions before, so maybe we could do something like that. Or maybe we could add a new submission category called "MDC" to apply to News of the Weird/Off the wall stories, or perhaps a mod option called "MDC" to indicate something wild/wonderful.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:06AM (4 children)
Personally, I'd like to set up a pseudo-charity geared for folks who are somewhere between needing institutionalized and being able to take care of themselves. Have someone who can go around regularly and see how they're doing, hang out for a while, help them get things done they're having problems with, and the like. You know, like family should but for folks that don't have them to fall back on for whatever reason. It's just an enormous pain to get the paperwork right for a non-profit and I'm unsure if we have pockets deep enough to cover expenses incurred in the line of duty like gas and such.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:36AM (3 children)
That's a great idea Buzzard!
However, even when family *is* around, mental illness is still debilitating and the see saw of pharmaceuticals (which almost universally have big negative side effects), self-medication and the knowledge that no matter what happens, they will have to deal with this for the rest of their lives, should make better treatment options, broad-based education debunking the stigma attached ot mental illness and increased funding for research into curing mental illness even more important.
You might want to check out this charity [bensmemorialmile.com] as its namesake had a similar (if much shorter) trajectory as MDC.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @11:53AM (2 children)
Research, yay. Curing though? Nobody works on cures anymore (for the most part). Unless you're some academic without the resources necessary to do much of anything, you're being paid to work on treatments and would probably be fired and sued for actually curing anything. That's a large, long-term issue though. There's little to nothing adding my voice to the screaming match is going to do any time soon.
As for the charity, nope. Entirely wrong track. Throwing money at the problem won't do much of anything for folks like MDC or my younger self. I'm not thinking about starting up something to collect and distribute money. I'm thinking about wrangling volunteers to go out and actually make a real difference in someone's life right now by simply being present in their lives and helping if needed if they don't have anyone else who can or will. It wouldn't need any money aside from comping gas, paying for the occasional lunch, and the like.
The last bit that bugs me is the whole stigma thing. I don't see it. Plenty of folks around here don't like me all that much but they mostly have better (from their incorrect points of view) reasons than the ADHD that I was still taking Adderall for when we started this long, strange trip that is SoylentNews. I was never quiet about it or ashamed of it but I didn't receive much if any shit over it. I never saw MDC getting shit on for his problems either. Yeah, we might say "Dude, you're fucking nuts," once in a while but it wasn't an insult so much as a statement of fact that he'd readily agree with when he was back on his meds. As long as there's no malice in what you say, tiptoeing around someone's mental issues isn't doing them a charitable act, it's patronizing them.
I mean, I'm pretty sure Azuma is a couple steps away from picking flowers off the wallpaper (she's said a few really damned strange non-political things over the years in passing) but it doesn't bother me in the least. We get along just fine on IRC when we're engaging in Pun Fest `19, talking woodworking, or most anything else non-political. A little crazy in the mix is honestly just more fun than boring-assed normality. It's salt and pepper on the eggs of life.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:34PM (1 child)
Pick flowers off of the wallpaper?
That's silly.
You lick them off.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @03:51PM
Well I may do that but she licks the carpet last I checked.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:43PM (3 children)
Can we add an MDC option to https://soylentnews.org/subscribe.pl [soylentnews.org] ?
Or add a note there?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:08PM
An option? Fairly easily but the extreme renovation project I'm on until probably the end of the summer at the earliest has my RSI kicking up pretty good. Which means I can't put the necessary effort in to get out a site update worth of code without wicked nasty pain.
A note that MDC's uid is 2339? Piece of cake since it's just a template change. I'll do it right now.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:14PM (1 child)
Note added.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @11:14AM
Thank you. On behalf of the memory of MDC.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @06:40PM
with mdc. mdc can't die because i can't die. dxm.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Monday April 01 2019, @06:52PM
Sorry to hear you are having some medical issues. I hope you can get them under control soon.
Thanks for the reminder to subscribe. I also ordered a SN mousepad. I'll give a full review on the mousepad in a couple weeks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @07:22PM
Let it also be a complete one and an uncomplicated one.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Monday April 01 2019, @08:07PM (3 children)
How about the ability to regularly charge a subscription fee? I subscribed once - but it expired after a year without me noticing.
Also, as far as cost: I'd be happy with a $1/month subscription rate - assuming you have more than 333 people who'd sign up for something like that, you'd be golden. That's about half of your current $12/6 month suggested rate - but price elasticity might get you enough additional subscriptions to make it worthwhile.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:21PM (1 child)
The problem with low-amount, frequent subscriptions is that transaction fees eat a huge chunk out of them and so the site would end up getting considerably less than with the larger annual suggested rates.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 05 2019, @11:43AM
It's not really much of an issue with Stripe. They charge 2.9% + $0.30 for folks with transactions under $1M/year. Monthly rates would need to be even lower than what we have now for $0.30 to make a significant dent. I'm not sure of PayPal's exact rates but they appear the same on a $20 transaction, $19.12 to us.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @12:19PM
Or perhaps have multi year subscriptions?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @09:05PM (1 child)
Best wishes, Fnord666. We're rooting for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 03 2019, @01:00PM
I'm rooting for a better sex life, but, whatever does it for you.
I am SCREWING FOR VIRGINITY! to combat everyone who is killing for peace.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday April 01 2019, @09:17PM (6 children)
Any idea when SN will crack 5 digits? Or has it already? I'd kinda like some low UID bragging rights :D.
And, would be fun if there were enough users to do a pronounced "Soylent Newsing" effect when lots of people follow story links.
(Score: 3, Touché) by isostatic on Monday April 01 2019, @10:05PM (3 children)
Low uid?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:32AM (1 child)
Mine can't even buy beer.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by isostatic on Tuesday April 02 2019, @08:21AM
Move out of the U.S. Problem solved.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday April 02 2019, @03:17AM
I think he means IUD.
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Monday April 01 2019, @11:43PM (1 child)
You have got me beat, how much more of a race could there be?
Makes me wonder if there is an easy way to lookup arbitrary IDs to see if I even recognize the names immediately before and after me.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Monday April 01 2019, @11:44PM
After I post that the very next post I see is only 3 IDs away from me, and I couldn't miss PartTimeZombie...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday April 01 2019, @09:54PM (5 children)
I have just found out MDC has died.
I feel worse about this than maybe I should, because although I never met him, I thought of him as a friend.
As several have noted, his last few Journal entries were pretty odd, which worried me, but perhaps less than it should have. I had asked him if he was OK on several occasions when he seemed especially manic, but the dirty rotter had a way of going from completely fruitloop to slightly eccentric in the space of a few sentences, so I hoped he had a handle on things.
For someone with such extreme mental health problems he had a fair bit of insight into his problems, and seemed to have a plan to deal with the really bad bits.
I was not aware that he was unable to access a proper regimen of anti-psychotics due to the cost. This seems to me to be a failure of your awful healthcare system.
A good man died because his treatment would not be profitable. How sad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @10:10PM
But UH is such a baaaad idea cause "taxes are theft!" and all that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:37AM (3 children)
Wasn't about the healthcare system. He was eligible to have whatever he needed paid for, he just didn't/couldn't handle the paperwork and got cut off. Would have been nice if his family, friends, or anyone else had been around to spend half an hour annoying him and filling out the forms for him. They even have people who'll do it for you but the kicker is you have to ask and to do that you have to be mentally able to ask.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:50AM (2 children)
I love to yell abuse about the US health system as much as the next zombie, but to be really fair that is going to be a problem for any mental health system.
I wouldn't be surprised if being arrested is a big help for a lot of people with MDC's type of problems.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @02:13AM (1 child)
Been there myself, so I know precisely what it's like. Family finally annoyed me into seeing a shrink, shrink annoyed me into taking meds, meds gave me breathing room to build better coping skills, now all is good with no assistance at all. Lot of folks nowadays don't get how to family properly. Me, I'm pretty damned fond of having a group of folks who always have my back, even if we're mad at each other.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday April 02 2019, @02:31AM
I've had to do that for family too.
I'm glad you've got to the point where you can cope with stuff on your own.
Some people never quite get to that point, and it's awful for everyone in their life, but yes, family need to help because otherwise who would?
(Score: 4, Informative) by digitalaudiorock on Monday April 01 2019, @10:36PM
Been meaning to subscribe again...just did. Thanks to all for all the hard work making this possible!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday April 01 2019, @11:26PM (1 child)
Get well soon, Fnord! Hope the hospital carries your favorite flavor of ice cream.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @01:18PM
I learned a new word today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fnord [wikipedia.org]
Thanks to the both of you. Keep on humping SN!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Fnord666 on Tuesday April 02 2019, @03:56AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @08:59PM
As posted above:
"The initial event was that he got high, stripped, painted himself with mayonnaise, and was found skateboarding in circles around an In-N-Out. He got tased by the police, fell off the skateboard, and rolled down a hill. This left his balls on top of a hornet nest.
The tests revealed that he has an eating disorder involving hair and small metal objects. He contains numerous large masses of hair-wrapped metal objects that have gotten stuck inside his gut."
Yes? Pretty close?