ResidingOnEarth Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 For those of you who don't know: Debian is a very popular and influential operating system which is in use on millions of computers today. In-fact, looking at the HTTP response headers, it appears that the Freedomain Radio boards appear to be hosted on an Ubuntu server which will have been created from Debian. So you're all using Debian to read and spread philosophy. Ian Murdock died on 28th December 2015, aged 42. At present we don't know how he died or under what circumstances. EDIT: The links and content below this paragraph contain content that is dark and disturbing for some. He made some strange tweets before his death. They have since been removed from twitter, but can be seen here:https://archive.is/9HF4c He complains about extreme police brutality. His English is very broken in the tweets; which is not characteristic of Ian. Check out his blog and you'll quickly see he has a good command of the English language. Some of his tweets appear racist, but I really don't think he is or was trying to be. I think he was trying to point out that his suffering is real. There are lots of people these days that put forward the idea that "privileged white people" don't know suffering and they don't know police brutality. I think he was simply trying to say that, this meme is not true and his experience proves it. Assuming it really was Ian that posted those tweets, he was clearly not in a sound mental state, so he did not do well at communicating his thoughts. There is a reddit thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3ytbmi/in_memoriam_ian_murdock/ Another discussion thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813826 I read both of these threads, but neither of them revealed any new information on exactly what has happened. The only thing I gleaned from those threads is that it appears he really was in police custody: https://i.imgur.com/BGU8KLh.jpg It's very sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shirgall Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 His last tweets were disturbing, and the rumor is suicide, this one is calling for a "Truth About". 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabras Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 Some disturbing tweets indeed https://img.sauf.ca/pictures/2015-12-29/c12fc3b2278596da4a26edd4a41f3373.pdf His twitter account appears to be down. http://pastebin.com/yk8bgru5 more tweets Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archimedes Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 Wow, can't believe it. I read those tweets yesterday and thought his account was hacked. RIP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ResidingOnEarth Posted December 31, 2015 Author Share Posted December 31, 2015 His last tweets were disturbing, and the rumor is suicide, this one is calling for a "Truth About". I found them disturbing too. It took me to a dark place. It sounds like his last day on earth was spent in a state of agitation and horror. I can picture many plausible scenarios for how this transpired. The most likely scenarios I can picture (though not proven) are: Fall-out with neighbour. (see: tweet about knocking on his neighbours door) He is drunk. This is not established, but is plausible. There is a prior violent incident recorded on police records of him getting drunk in 2009 I think. He was charged with battery. Someone took a screen-shot of it. I didn't verify the screen-shot was authentic. Neighbour calls cops. (Not established, but is plausible) Ian doesn't deal with the cops as you should (with calm and extreme caution) and becomes confrontational. Cops "teach him a lesson": effectively beat him up and sexually assault him. Twice. Ian -- both hung-over and traumatised by this experience -- posts these strange, broken, messages on twitter. Later he kills himself. I expect he had other problems in his life already and this pushed him well over the edge. Alternative to 6. is: he suffered a bad head injury when the cops beat him up. That would explain his uncharacteristic, malformed English on twitter. He later dies from the head injury. None of the above is proven. It's just a narrative that fits what we know. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Ed Moran Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 This is complete speculation, but I also wonder if he had a past history of beatings or sexual assault in his childhood. It's just a thought, not sure it could even be established, but I know personally some of the darkest moments I've had were when I felt triggered to re-enter a childhood horror, and it can feel like there is no escape and that the suffering is bottomless. I also think the isolation is what can make it unbearable, this man must have been unbearably lonely to turn to twitter to express himself and declare his suicide. This story left me also in a very dark place, it was horrifying when I read how casually and abruptly he announced he was going to take his life. I sympathize with what horror and isolation he must have been facing, but I really wish it did not end this way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shirgall Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 Still not a lot of information. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ian-Murdock-Details-Still-MIA 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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