the bleakly funny difference between McAfee and Epstein is that no one wanted to be McAfee's friend
— Gorilla Warfare (again) (@MenshevikM) June 23, 2021
I asked the Spousal Unit (a professional tech writer, who doesn’t follow the news as closely as I do) whether he’d heard about McAfee’s death. He said Yeah — the man died because he couldn’t stop being a libertarian.
Which made me wonder, as someone who’d been diagnosed with OCD: How many hardcore libertarians got there because they’re neurodivergent? So many of the ones I’ve known (and, as an sf fan, that’s 50 years of more interactions than either side wanted) have built themselves a perfectly cromulent set of mental shelves & boxes, and they are FURIOUS that the rest of us keep wandering through and messing up the Perfect Order…
The media is really trying to make us think McAfee killed himself.
This guy? Not buying it. pic.twitter.com/4BnP6X4kl1
— Arbycoin Speculator (@canderaid) June 23, 2021
glem's entering humiliation-fetish levels of willing to demean and degrade himself for engagement and you love to see it. https://t.co/gGdHehNSxV
— FREE THE WEREWOLF MACHINE (@golikehellmachi) June 25, 2021
RandomMonster
I approve of the message of GG being one of the dumbest people on the planet.
NotMax
Things fall apart. Including, at a rough guess, 99.86% of conspiracy theories.
;)
Old School
I’m sure those documents will be coming out any day now.
Chetan Murthy
@Old School: I’m so old I remember when Epstein supposedly had a deadman’s switch too.
Steeplejack
I guess we’ll be seeing those documents and that database any day now. Unless . . . OMG, [whispers] the deep state. Eek!
I don’t know about libertarians in general, but I have known more than a few nutty programmers and software types in my career. You don’t have to be “neurodivergent” to get way out there. It can be as simple as bad EQ/social skills, success/mastery in one narrow area (leading to an inflated sense of self-worth in all areas) and—what is often the match that starts the conflagration—sudden and/or great financial success. McAfee checked all of those boxes. He was able to isolate himself (as much as he wanted) and let the nuttiness fester.
And, yes, a lot of them are drawn to libertarianism like moths to the flame. It feels like a natural fit for the self-made geniuses that they are. ?
Amir Khalid
Why would anyone, even Glenn Greenwald, even think that McAfee’s death was faked? I mean, there’s a dead body and everything. I really haz a puzzled.
Chetan Murthy
@Amir Khalid: I think there are some who think his *suicide* was faked. That is, that he was murdered. Like y’know [checks vicinity for hidden microphones] *Epstein*.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
If I’m not totally misreading the concept here it’s not his death, it’s his suicide. He’s saying he wouldn’t have killed himself.
Anya
@RandomMonster: He is not dumb. He knows there is no documents or massive database but he relies on the stupidity and conspiracy mindedness of his flowers for his livelihood so he’ll feed them.
Anya
The fact that McAfee was kept mentioning suicide should tell these people that he had suicidal ideations.
HumboldtBlue
Simone Biles on her least favorite event.
Olympic trials.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
@Chetan Murthy:
Is there a murder suspect?
Warblewarble
With GG there is always a murder suspect and a suspect murder, You know who you are and GG KNOWS,
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
I’d say likely not. But it would depend on the circumstances of the death scene. Were the doors locked from the inside, was there anyone else around or in the house/where ever, who found him? Those are questions off the top of my head, quick answer, not knowing any details of where, who, when, how. He was seemingly pretty much a loner as I understand it, not seemingly firmly feet on the ground mentally, so this is all conjecture. Or misdirection. Maybe he wanted to go out on his own terms, maybe we’ll never know.
Ruckus
@Warblewarble:
And it’s all easily verifiable……… by GG.
Who seems to have taken a rather deep dive off the end of reality.
HumboldtBlue
Fernando Tatis had some fun tonight.
Kent
It is all fun and games and hypothetical until you get to spend real time inside a prison or jail. I would imagine that Spanish jails are not all that pleasant, especially if you are not Spanish.
So whatever mental state the man might have had a couple years ago when joking about the topic was likely a LOT LOT different than the mental state he might have had from inside a Spanish prison awaiting extradition to the US. Not to mention the fact that someone like him, living in a world of conspiracy theories probably has a pretty grim notion of what “deep state” prisons look like in the US.
And, of course McAfee is the only one who knew exactly what he actually did that was criminal. He may have been WAY WAY deeper into illegal shit than anyone actually knew, or that was public, and he may have known that he was potentially looking at very serious time and maybe for the rest of his meaningful life.
Comrade Colette
@Ruckus: He reportedly hanged himself in a Spanish prison.
Dude was probably a murderer and definitely had gone off the deep end long ago, and sadly with enough money to insulate himself from consequences for a long time – but not forever.
piratedan
@Ruckus: all I can say about GG is that I’m sure that as a catspaw, he’s nearing the end of his usefulness. My best guess is he ends up disappearing from the interwebs and ends up being a urban web legend that other web bros use as a cautionary example of being silenced by the greatest serial killer social ninja of all time, Hilary Rodham Clinton..
DMcK
@Kent: The one thing we do know for sure is that he was being held in Spain for extradition to the US to stand trial for a very long history of tax evasion. A conviction for that alone would have ruined him.
JWR
Meanwhile, two stories of police going all SOP on Black men that I don’t think made it to these august pages this past week. (Note: Both of these incidents ocurred some time ago.):
And:
Ruckus
@Comrade Colette:
I understand, I believe that he took his own life, the stories about him do not leave a picture of a normal human being or one who respected others or life. But Amir asked a legit question, how do we know it was suicide? I’m sure there will be an investigation of some level. And we may never know absolutely for sure.
Ruckus
@piratedan:
Well he sure seems to be doing a bang up job of making himself even more useless than he’s been for some time, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t possible. I stand corrected he is an even bigger ass than I suspected, and I’d already awarded him asshole, deluxe level. He’s gone and made that super deluxe, and that leaves only two steps left, super duper deluxe or asshole, no longer breathing.
Kent
How do we ever know anything?
We know that Spain is a modern democracy and that they have a normal criminal justice system like other normal modern democracies with jails run by professional people. If you are going to murder someone then a jail is probably the last place you would want to do it because of all the security and weapons screening that happens in every single modern jail on the planet.
So Occam’s Razor suggests that the simplest answer is usually the correct one. That he knew his high-flying lifestyle was over and he was looking at a very long stint in the slammer. And decided to take his own life rather than face that fate. Unless you are under 24/7 suicide watch it is usually not that difficult to take your own life if you are determined to do so.
piratedan
@Ruckus: found him to be cut from the same cloth as Roger Stone. While I used to consider myself a person who never thought violence was an answer to the problems that we face, if those two disappeared from the public view, dead in a ditch somewhere, I’m sure that the shared oxygen we gained would be considered a bonus.
While I loathe truly evil men and their misguided ways, for some reason people like this, who make the internal calculation that THIS is the side that they choose to support; make me disappointed with myself that I would seriously consider jail time for the opportunity to lash out against them.
rikyrah
@JWR:
?????
rikyrah
Why was he in a prison in Spain?
A rich White guy
Kent
US authorities caught up with him in Spain and asked the Spanish to detain him for extradition. We have an extradition treaty with Spain so they happily complied. He was apparently too arrogant or foolish to limit his travels to just those countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the US. He rolled the dice and lost I guess.
He should have limited his travels to China, the Russian Federation, Namibia, the United Arab Emirates, North Korea, and Bahrain like Edward Snowden did if he wanted to be safe from extradition.
Ruckus
@Kent:
Didn’t he own an island where he likely could have stayed for the rest of his life? Or did he live on one that didn’t like him (likely not a short list).
Ruckus
@piratedan:
I find violence to be OK in self defense, otherwise I’m opposed. There seems to be far more than enough violence without adding to it. While we may not live in caves and club strange animals for food, and others trying to take that food away from us, we should, as much as possible try to take away as many reason for it as possible, such as hunger, poverty, racial discrimination.
piratedan
@Ruckus: I totally agree, but I freely admit, that some of these folks trigger me into righteous anger mode :-)
JWR
@rikyrah: Totally agree. But now that Chauvin’s been sentenced, I’m sure the police won’t pull that sorta sh*t again. //eyesrolling
Kent
He owned a small island off the coast of Belize that was part of Belize. But Belize has an extradition treaty with the US and is a tiny country dependent on US aid and tourism. So he was most certainly not safe from extradition there.
There are very few countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa that do not have extradition treaties with the US. A few Gulf States, Russia and China and that is about it.
ian
@Ruckus:
Spanish prison. Then again. no one suspects the Spanish Inquisition!
Starfish
I replied to Ruckus, but honestly it was not worth it. I am unimpressed by “how could we ever know?” as if all sorts of things are just unknowable.
Starfish
The only unusual thing about this is that it did not happen sooner. I am old enough to remember this nonsense.
Ruckus
@Starfish:
Well a lot of things are unknowable. We can think we have answers and often we do, but often we just don’t really know and it’s not worth actually spending the time and effort to find out. For example it’s worth the time and effort to find out how Covid became an epidemic in seeming a hurry. Now part of that is that we fly around the world a lot and few countries don’t have access to world flights. So now a pandemic is much easier than in 1918. As well there are a dramatically lot more bodies on the earth now than then. So the spread is easier. Which makes knowing much more important. But it will take time so until then we just don’t know. We know the most likely way and that is far more likely than subterfuge, but we are not sure.
Martin
McAfee was nuts. He hired a hitman to have his neighbor (successfully) murdered. If anyone wants to argue that libertarianism is correlative with mental illness, I’m not going to argue.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kent: Pretty sure Venezuela can be added to the list, maybe Cuba too.
Hildebrand
Well – woke up to flooded streets and a completely flooded basement. If anyone has advice, let me know.
OzarkHillbilly
@Hildebrand: Stay away from gators and water moccasins. Sorry you have to go thru it.
JPL
@Hildebrand: That sucks!
Geminid
@Hildebrand: In the short term, you could rent or buy a submersible pump to get the water out. The small ones would take some time. An excavation contracter might have bigger pump that could empty the basement more quickly. Then a big exhaust fan might help dry things out.
For longer term effect, I would check the perimeter of the foundation with a level. Basement water problems often happen when the backfill subsides. Typically the backfill is finished with a positive pitch that sheds water away from the house. But if the fill is not suffiently compacted, over time it can subside to the point there is negative pitch that sheds water towards the foundation. This happens a lot (faulty guttering can aggravate the problem). Low areas at the foundation can be added to with clay soil and tamped by hand. Topsoil is not as good as clay soil for this purpose.
Mold could develop into a problem. I haven’t used anti-mold products, but they are out there, and probably have safety warnings to use protective gear like goggles, gloves and a respirator while applying them.
Good luck!
Technocrat
Two inmates killed themselves at the same facility McAfee was being held at. That’s according to the Daily Mail, so YMMV.
Three suicides in three months seems like a lot. But it means McAfee’s death wasn’t an unusual occurrence. Even if this facility specializes in quote-unquote-suicides, they are not reserved for reclusive tech billionaires.
What’s funny is how people make narratives from things like this. McAfee dies, so people see echoes of Epstein. They do NOT see echoes of the two guys who died the same way in the same place in the previous month.
Barry
@piratedan: “all I can say about GG is that I’m sure that as a catspaw, he’s nearing the end of his usefulness. My best guess is he ends up disappearing from the interwebs and ends up being a urban web legend that other web bros use as a cautionary example of being silenced by the greatest serial killer social ninja of all time, Hilary Rodham Clinton..”
He is an open homosexual living in a third world country with a near fascist who depends on right-wing christofascists.
I expect him to be murdered, and his murders to get away with it.
Barry
@Kent: “We know that Spain is a modern democracy and that they have a normal criminal justice system like other normal modern democracies with jails run by professional people. If you are going to murder someone then a jail is probably the last place you would want to do it because of all the security and weapons screening that happens in every single modern jail on the planet.”
Like the USA?
Geminid
@Barry: Greenwalt has been living in these circumstances for some years now. It may be that he tacitly supports the current regime. And if he is a Russian asset, which seems possible, the Russians may have requested that he be protected. Putin and Bolsanero seem like peas in a pod, so to speak.
I read about a gay member of the Brazilian parliament, a Bolsanero supporter, who was a porn star. Evidently Brazilian right wing polticians can be pretty diverse. Greenwalt is a politician in the broader sense. He may not call himself conservative, but he seems to hate liberals.
Ken
So one possible consequence of the IRS actions — because it’s not death or taxes, it’s death and taxes — is that the US government will seize part of Belize for McAfee’s back taxes?
EM
I watched the documentary about him the other night on “Showtime”. One super bizarre fetish he had was him going under a hammock and having a woman defecate through the hammock into his mouth. Seriously. Strange guy.
Procopius
@Steeplejack: According to Robert X. Cringely, Accidental Empires, Bill Gates had extremely poor social skills. He also had to be reminded to wash his hair.
Emma
For anyone else who didn’t know the first thing about John McAfee, other than his crappy anti-virus program, highly recommend the Behind the Bastard episodes on him. He truly had so many issues, but also SO MANY ridiculous (and ridiculously illegal) things to laugh at.
Medicine Man
I love the Epstein conspiracy theories. People have to come up with some madcap explanation for why a deflated malignant narcissist on a collision course with a crushing comeuppance would never kill himself. Its so silly.
Ruckus
@Hildebrand:
Ouch!
When I lived in OH I think my house was over an underground spring. Because I went through 3 sump pumps in 10 yrs, just wore them out, the sump filled so often. There was a reasonably sized river just over a 1/4 mile from me so that idea isn’t as crazy as it seems.
The concept of a submergible pump is likely as good as it gets. Was it nature or supply pipes that caused the flooding? One is fixable, the other is a lot tougher to accommodate.
LiminalOwl
@Starfish: Me too. And a little surprised that I haven’t seen any comments about him finally getting uninstalled, or uninstalling himself.