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Please support the Common Lisp Revival 2020 Fundraiser!!! #1

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Hexstream opened this issue Dec 6, 2020 · 101 comments
Open

Please support the Common Lisp Revival 2020 Fundraiser!!! #1

Hexstream opened this issue Dec 6, 2020 · 101 comments

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@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 6, 2020

I'm the canary in the coal mine, and I'm almost dead.

MICHAŁ HERDA (PHOE) SCAMMED TWITTER INTO LOCKING MY ACCOUNT FOR CALLING OUT HIS DOXING.


[edit: Also see the urgent appeal, since I replaced the link at the start of the pitch to point here instead of there.]

Sorry for the mass ping, but this is extremely important and I should have done this way earlier, I just didn't think of GitHub as "social media"...

Please support the Common Lisp Revival 2020 Fundraiser!!!
The deadline is 10 december 2020!!

Here is the post on twitter and on LinkedIn.
Please spread far and wide for the eternal glory of Common Lisp!!
And please make a donation if you can afford it.

Also see my urgent appeal to LispWorks, Franz, the Common Lisp Foundation, Paul Graham, Planck EZ, and everyone else for additional context. Here is the post on twitter and on LinkedIn.

Please make sure to sponsor me from an account able to give out doublers, you should see a banner confirming this at the top (when logged in).

Also beware of prorating, which might significantly cut down your contribution if you are not careful. Any prorating will be announced on the checkout page, and you may need to sponsor at a higher tier to arrive at the amount that you intended to contribute.

I am inviting the following people (and everyone else interested) to help make the Common Lisp Revival 2020 Fundraiser successful! I simply found them on the Common Lispers list and removed a few, such as (most of?) those that I am quite sure will not be interested.

@svetlyak40wt @guicho271828 @cbaggers @telent @mbattyani @duncan-bayne @artob @mdbergmann @eudoxia0 @kingcons @ahungry @rudolfochrist @ebrasca @genworks @pcostanza @cracauer @sabracrolleton @cxxxr @thodg @delaray @vindarel @orivej @pfdietz @vseloved @xrme @easye @dimitri @michaeljforster @froydnj @antifuchs @fukamachi @rongarret @Slids @lukego @macdavid313 @chaitanyagupta @slyrus @marijnh @froggey @ahefner @marcoheisig @bhyde @kaygun @lispnik @pkhuong @gwkkwg @borodust @fiddlerwoaroof @danlentz @sjl

@Hexstream
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@joaotavora
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But I thought I was the chief architect of the looming Common Lisp revolution! Or was that the dear leader of the looming Common Lisp revolution? 🤔

@ryukinix
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ryukinix commented Dec 7, 2020

Good luck! God bless you and the Lisp community. We are in suffering.

@mdbergmann
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I've looked through most of the links (I hope).
But it's completely unclear what should the raised money be used for.
What are the short, mid, long term goals?

@joaotavora
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I've looked through most of the links (I hope).

Hopefully, you didn't click through all of them. I did, and I regret it.

@ahungry
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ahungry commented Dec 7, 2020

@Hexstream I don't consider github social media either, so I'm confused why I'm being tagged in something I have no association with - the issue/name tagging is meant for project development, not for what appears to amount to begging.

If I donated the minimum ($5/month) to you, why shouldn't I donate it to all Quicklisp contributors? At that point, given there are thousands of them, it'd likely cost me over $5000/month to support, which is not realistic.

Could you let me know where I can find the list of people you sponsor/donate to that have contributed to Quicklisp, or CL?

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 7, 2020

@ryukinix Thank you. We sure are! Things will get better. (And they will get better much faster if I get at least some minimal funding...)

@mdbergmann I am dedicating most of my life to Common Lisp Open Source. You may like to consult my roadmap for my most concrete and immediate goals. A core goal of the fundraiser is to enable me to concentrate almost all my energy on Common Lisp Open Source instead of having to divert energy elsewhere due to financial concerns.

@ahungry

I'm confused why I'm being tagged in something I have no association with

The association is that you are using Common Lisp, and are thus presumably potentially interested in helping Common Lisp succeed, and one of the most direct ways you can do that is by helping fund me with this fundraiser, since that would dramatically increase my productivity at very low cost, so that I can contribute even more faster due to giving me a better quality of life through improved finances. Also, GitHub will double your contribution, which is extra nice and cost-effective.

the issue/name tagging is meant for project development

A major reason why I am soliciting funding is to accelerate the development of my relevant Common Lisp Open Source projects.

what appears to amount to begging

I am working tirelessly to improve the state of Common Lisp infrastructure (notably including community resources), which will eventually lead us to a more dignified state where top Common Lisp Open Source contributors like me (and obviously others) no longer need to resort to anything even resembling begging to get funding. Also, I'm not sure if it counts as "begging" since I have already delivered tremendous value to Common Lisp Open Source. I think it's fair to expect at least a little payback at some point.

If I donated the minimum ($5/month) to you, why shouldn't I donate it to all Quicklisp contributors? At that point, given there are thousands of them, it'd likely cost me over $5000/month to support, which is not realistic.

I don't understand the argument. This is completely unrelated. If you decided to invest thousands of dollars in the Common Lisp community, then giving 5$/month to everyone is literally the least effective way to do good. That's not going to really move the needle for anyone.

Whereas if this fundraiser is successful, then that would vastly increase my productivity as a top Common Lisp Open Source contributor, thereby directly benefitting the entire Common Lisp community.

Could you let me know where I can find the list of people you sponsor/donate to that have contributed to Quicklisp, or CL?

Actually I have been sponsoring a few relevant Common Lisp people (and had to temporarily stop due to cashflow issues), although for some reason they almost inevitably end up backstabbing me in some way. If the fundraiser is completely successful then I can resume the remaining sponsorships immediately and add more, but this is incidental. This is not where my core value is. I am doing this fundraiser because I need funding to help me work on my projects faster. Asking who I am funding strikes me as a bit incoherent in this context.


I hope this helps clarify things for some of you.

@ralt
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ralt commented Dec 7, 2020

Just to clarify for everyone in this thread, @Hexstream "contributions" have been analyzed here by Michael "phoe" Herda (@phoe): https://gist.github.com/phoe/ccba343687dc21e3a71d0dc6db68c96e (spoiler: it's not great)

I was really confused as for why I was tagged as well and had to do some research, where I found this link among various twitter and github threads.

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 7, 2020

@ralt Michał Herda (phoe)'s "analysis" of my work is malicious, superficial and fraudulent, as I have already denounced several times. Literally the only reason I have not completely debunked him in real-time is that I'm too busy with the fundraiser. I have consistently debunked him in real-time before that. When I revealed to him that I didn't have time to debunk him because of the fundraiser, he immediately jumped on the occasion to unleash his most batshit insane attacks. He is a fraud. I have promised to thoroughly debunk him in 2021.

[CENSORED]

See the full story.

Also, he has himself publicly revealed that (and this is a direct quote you can verify) he is "already under weekly care of a psychotherapist and less frequent, but consistent, care of a psychiatrist", although [CENSORED]. As linked from my tweet, the actual place he says that is here.

@ralt
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ralt commented Dec 7, 2020

Regardless of phoe's neurological troubles (which I doubt, but that's another issue), I'd say that you should take care of the feuds you have with at least 2 fairly well-known people in the Lisp community (I saw another twitter thread where you were saying Xach was a psychopath?) before promoting yourself for a fundraiser from the Lisp community as a whole.

In other words, clean your door, and then come back once that's done.

@samuel-hunter
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I'm probably going to regret engaging in what looks like a days-long flamewar, but...

@ralt Michał Herda (phoe)'s "analysis" of my work is malicious, superficial and fraudulent, as I have already denounced several times.

I took a casual look at your Twitter account (which I suppose you do the majority of your debunking?) and found it's not entirely convincing:

image

debunking


Unfortunately as a student, I don't have the expendable income to give back to the community financially, but if I were, my judgement tells me to first go look at the libraries and development tools that supported me first.

@Hexstream
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@ralt

I said Zach Beane is a sociopath, and he has never denied or otherwise addressed this in 2+ years after I revealed it.
I'm mostly over it at this point, and we actually have a pretty good working relationship these days.

I have already repeatedly unilaterally de-escalated the situation between me and Zach Beane, and I am strongly considering moving the "PSA about Zach Beane" (which has already been gradually moved to the very bottom of the page) off of HexstreamSoft if the fundraiser is successful or at any later time where the power dynamics would change enough that I can ethically do that. Now that I am starting to be successful, obviously I don't want to start punching down or anything like that.

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 7, 2020

@samuel-hunter phoe concentrates on the one metric on the page that is obviously patently incorrect, and publicly and persistently and insistently claims that this completely invalidates all the other obviously much more credible and accurate metrics on the page. This is proof positive that he is neurologically damaged.

Keep in mind that this guy represents himself as someone who has serious and relevant things to say about me and my work. He really does not. He's just trying to quickly scam everyone while he can (while he knows I'm too busy with the fundraiser to respond), and unfortunately he is experiencing some success in that endeavor. I will completely debunk him in 2021, as promised.

@alessiostalla
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@Hexstream if you want your efforts in raising funds and producing good value for the community to succeed, I think you should reevaluate how you address others, because regardless of what you think is right or wrong, your way of communicating will only alienate people. As much as you can contribute to the community all by yourself, you need collaboration to succeed, as you already know since you're asking for resources from others. So, regardless of what you think of other people's neurological or psychological problems, if you want to maintain a collaborative stance, you'll have to be reasonably kind to them (and no, screaming to go to a neurologist asap when you don't understand them is NOT being kind to them). The choice of behavior is yours, and you'll see others reacting accordingly. I can only say that your way of addressing others that disagree with you has actually discouraged me from donating anything, regardless of any technical merits that your contributions may have, that I have no interest now to find out as I put good collaboration over technical value.

Good luck with your efforts.

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 7, 2020

I have already extensively interacted with phoe, unlike you. He was already [CENSORED], and now he's just getting exponentially [CENSORED], and it's not going to get better unless there is a serious medical intervention. I never throw accusations lightly. He is the only one who has ever thrown anything that I did not immediately debunk, and this is entirely because I am busy with the fundraiser, and he knows this and deliberately takes advantage of this. I will completely debunk him in 2021 as promised.

As for my "interaction style", that is mostly due to me being consistently attacked and humiliated for helping build the Common Lisp community towards a more dignified state, as I explained. The more funding I get, the more I can just concentrate on building our infrastructure rather than defending myself against countless, constant unfair attacks.

@johnlorentzson
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Phoe would like to respond to this, but is unable to since you have blocked him.

image

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 7, 2020

@johnlorentzson Yes, this is correct and proper, and the justification for it has only kept increasing since then. Michał Herda (phoe) should concentrate all his efforts on [CENSORED]. I do not believe he has anything useful to contribute to this debate, or at least, any tiny value he might bring would be completely overshadowed by the mayhem caused by [CENSORED]. I will completely debunk him in 2021, as promised. It won't be pretty.

@johnlorentzson
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I can't read the Tweet you are linking because you have blocked me.

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 7, 2020

I don't remember that. What's your twitter handle?

The tweet says: "This was not on my 2020 bingo card: First, I have to declare phoe as being the single biggest threat to the Common Lisp community right now, although it is circumstantial. I'm forced to temporarily block him to concentrate on the fundraiser. I shall thoroughly debunk him in 2021."

You can also log out to see all tweets.

@parjanya
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parjanya commented Dec 7, 2020

It would be convenient to write something anyone actually uses first, then asking them for money to increase your productivity. For now, as I see it, more productivity on writing useless software isn’t particularly useful.

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 7, 2020

@gwkkwg
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gwkkwg commented Dec 7, 2020

FWIW, I'm unsubscribing from this conversation and do not wish to part of it.

@Hexstream
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Right, sorry for anyone not interested.

@genworks
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genworks commented Dec 7, 2020 via email

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 8, 2020

@genworks

Thank you so much for speaking out, Dave! It's really RARE to see anyone take my side, and this is surely my biggest endorsement yet!

As a bonus, here is what I sent Dave shortly after making my big donation, I think it's pretty informative:

It should be plainly obvious by now that my commitment to the well-being of the Common Lisp community is ABSOLUTE (though not exclusive, see ponies 😂). I also have a strong commitment to "hilarity", and the Common Lisp community, through its various dysfunctions, unwittingly provides plenty of instances of and opportunities for such, in the form of grossly unfair glaring inconsistencies, many of which are to my direct and prolonged detriment and that I am in a position to further magnify through my unfailing benevolence.

Witness Zach Beane (admittedly a strong contributor), who gets all the praise in the world while being astoundingly deaf to the needs of the community and has in countless documented cases denied to dedicate even a SHRED of his vast influence towards the promotion and reinforcement of important community-building initiatives, such as the ASDF Appreciation Fundraiser. Meanwhile, my prolonged and mounting attempts to unify the Common Lisp community using my far more limited resources, of which the Common Lispers list is only the most recent among my string of such initiatives, have mostly been met with summary dismissals and even charges of dividing the community.

Having received an apparent offer of a high-paying part-time remote job from a top-tier tech company on April 1st (LOL), and the ELS beginning on that day, and the ASDF Appreciation Fundraiser having been extended to April 8, and April 1st being my birthday, and a senseless wave of slanderous nonsense being unfolding on the Common Lispers list reddit thread, I thought here was a cosmically hilarious opportunity to immediately dedicate my anticipated new resources to the Common Lisp community, hence my large donation to immediately complete the fundraiser doubler.

While the timing of the offer of course gave me pause, there were multiple signals that this was a genuine offer. I completed an important interview yesterday and am waiting for the results. After a few more steps, if all goes well, I should soon be able to dedicate even more resources to the communities I care about, as I will finally have lifted myself out my financial precarity after 12+ years of work. For years I have refused to even look for a job for fear of compromising my dedication to the open-source community, but the flexible format and high paying rate of this job would allow me to even further enhance my participation in the open-source community, in stark contrast to traditional employment agreements. I am really grateful that this offer has landed into my lap out of nowhere and that I didn't even need to look for it, and did not even have to negotiate the salary.

So now I believe you would have a much better idea of the context of my donation. I thank you fondly for your support!

edit: The company was Triplebyte, they fucking rock!

@genworks
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genworks commented Dec 8, 2020 via email

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 8, 2020

For the record, I am not taking any "sides" here.

Well, let's just say it's rare to see any Common Lisper publicly say something positive about me, period.

I'm simply pointing out that you made this donation and expressing an opinion that it would be gracious if folks could separate that wheat from the chaff.

Ok, well I hope this is not the chaff. (edit: Updated the link to be a bit more specific.)

Note that your donation setup does not appear to allow one-time donations - unless I'm missing something, everything is "per month."

GitHub Sponsors could certainly use some usability upgrades. I'm thinking of starting a ko-fi after the fundraiser if GitHub Sponsors has no immediate plans to improve usability for one-time donations.

I just signed up for $25 and plan to cancel after the second $25 has been charged.

Thank you! That will then effectively be a 75$ USD donation since GitHub will double the first one and not the second (since the doubler will have expired).

Thank you again for your generous support of ASDF back in those heady times.

Thank you, honestly that was pretty reckless and created a lot of drama in the family. :(

@delaray
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delaray commented Dec 8, 2020 via email

@Hexstream
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OH MY GOD, thank you so much! This is... unimaginable!

It looks like we really can turn this thing around, after all!!

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

(Remember, the deadline is 10 december 2020!!)

@Hexstream
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Common Lisp Revival 2020 Fundraiser ends today!

This has been a batshit insane 12 days.

Basically, at this point I'm out of steam and waiting on possible large donations or other major events.

To anyone listening, I am relying on your support.

Thank you.

@rongarret
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rongarret commented Dec 10, 2020 via email

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 10, 2020

Congratulations Ron Garret, you have successfully been scammed by Michał Herda.

You are not the first one, and you will not be the last.

Also, the "ugly truths that nobody wants to hear and everyone absolutely must hear" mostly referred to this mostly historical shit, which I am sure you will immediately fall in love with.

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 10, 2020

Alright, Ron Garret, let me tell you one thing.

I empathize with you for falling for Michał Herda's scam(s), since you obviously haven't had time to investigate this properly yet. Indeed, this is pretty much his entire strategy. He is attacking me at this time because he knows I don't have time to properly debunk him because of the fundraiser. I have consistently debunked him in near real-time in the past.

If you are that enamored with his huge corpus of maliciously misleading shit and straight up lies, then you can go ahead and take a deep dive in it and confront me with what you think is his best "arguments". I will be happy to debunk them in real-time piece by piece for you and everyone else. Given a fair trial, I will stand up to scrutiny, he will not.

I strongly suggest you do this, lest this become your permanent black mark as someone who understandably fell for a scam and then failed to properly investigate when pressed.

edit: Note that Michał Herda (phoe) is already seeing a psychologist and a psychiatrist, and I have publicly wished him best of luck in his treatment. Given what I have seen of and publicly denounced about his behavior, I think it is not a stretch to suggest that he should also see a neurologist.

@delaray
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delaray commented Dec 10, 2020 via email

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 10, 2020

@delaray

Thank you. I appreciate your perspective and I think it is probably valid in general.

In my case, though, I have made a permanent and irrevocable commitment to radical transparency, in large part because I know or believe I can afford it thanks to my relatively great privilege. I think it would be a great loss to the world if I suddenly gave up on that.

I would not know how to live any other way, and it would be very weird and suspicious if I suddenly fell completely silent, especially right after finally getting some "real" (but mostly slanderous) opposition after facing several years of almost complete silence which I repeatedly denounced and offered as strong implicit proof that I am right. How would that not make me look like a debunked scam artist?

The world needs at least a few people like me, and I am humbly requesting support from caring people like you to be even more effective in my painful but rightful crusades.

edit:

“Phoe”, who by the way I’ve never heard of and I know quite a lot of people in the CL community

That's funny, but I assure you that phoe is, or was, a valued Common Lisp contributor before he decided to almost completely overshadow that by becoming a scam artist literally overnight. (I do have a propensity to be fair even to my worst enemies.)

@delaray
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delaray commented Dec 10, 2020 via email

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 10, 2020

@delaray

Alright, well you can thank me for immediately refusing to let phoe himself shit all over this thread (which would have been instant death), among other crucial moderation decisions I made that allowed this thread to be viable and productive.

I just want to make clear that phoe has substantially nothing useful to say about me, and hopefully Ron in particular will quickly come to realize this.

I am very heartened that you remain stoic in the face of this slanderous disruptor.
I greatly appreciate your crucial assistance and patience in this difficult campaign.

edit: And thank you for fixing the Outlook bug? ;)

Hexstream added a commit that referenced this issue Dec 10, 2020
@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 11, 2020

We still have a few hours at most before my GitHub Sponsors doubler expires.

If anyone wants to get a large donation in at the last minute (Pierre?), then please go to the fundraiser page right now and if there is still a banner at the top saying that GitHub will double your contribution, then you still have time!!

In any case, given the existence of this epic thread, I am very optimistic about my post-fundraiser prospects in the coming months.

Thank you.

edit: To be clear, GitHub said that my doubler expires on 11 december, but I decided that 10 december would be the official end of the fundraiser because I didn't want to start counting timezones and stuff.

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 11, 2020

In the interest of radical transparency, here is Too Much Information™ about me.

I hope some of you find this inspiring. There is still some time left before my doubler expires...

edit: Updated version available. Refresh.

@Hexstream
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Alright! Common Lisp Revival 2020 Fundraiser has finished. The fundraiser was a financial failure, probably mostly due to starting late. My bad! THANK YOU to all participants! I'm very hopeful about my post-fundraiser prospects, thanks to this EPIC THREAD! (Tweeted.)

There is quite a lot more to say about this, but it's late and I'm very exhausted so I'll try to wrap this thing up before Christmas, I have quite a lot of work to do for this. And there will no doubt be quite a lot of interesting stuff happening post-fundraiser, as this still has been a relatively high-profile event. (It's all relative!)

This thread will remain open as long as I deem it useful, and I will actively moderate it as needed. Thank you!

Repository owner deleted a comment from goffa48 Dec 12, 2020
@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 12, 2020

Deleted @goffa48's message and blocked him. This is a 3 days old anonymous account which I reported.

There will be no glorification of doxing in here. This will always be an instaban.

@lispegistus
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Hello everyone. My name is Pavel, some of you might know me, for the rest, I'm a lisper with minuscule public contributions to the community, but I do use common lisp professionally to a degree now, so I guess I count as more than just a lisp fan :)

I've tried to stay out of this mess for years and when hex contacted me about the fundraiser I basically told him that I didn't buy his allegations but engaged with him and gave him I think a fare chance to explain himself, spend a couple of days thinking about it carefully before I responded too. After some back and forth I decided to contribute a small, almost symbolic amount with the strong advice that he use it in order to asses his mental health, rather than use it towards any contribution to lisp he might be planning as I felt that would benefit both him and his work better and the community better.

I planned to stay away after that as I have much much bigger worries in my private life than the public drama of the open source world. I told him not to contact me and that I was done. Unfortunately, in the 30?ish hours since I last spoke with him, things seem to have deteriorated somewhat with him intentionally doxing himself for some incomprehensible reason and trying to put the blame on others by insinuating that it was preemptive?! One screenshot I saw had him giving his address and warning people not to come uninvited. I'm sorry, that prompted me once again to insist you seek help.

You're verging into self-harm territory here. You claimed to have "come to your senses" quickly, but you have told me multiple times that you are "dangerously sane" is that what this means? Dangerously sane only some of the time?

To be clear, I absolutely do not consider neurodivergence to be a form of mental illness. Very far from it. I am strongly opposed to the stigma people on the spectrum are subject to. But abusive and extreme behavior certainly is a sign, and even if neurodivergence is not a mental illness in and of itself, managing it's social consequences can be very rough without help.

I also share your fear that the mental health industry is very much filled with all sorts of quackery and prejudice, I had to deal with it myself this year on several occasions and I would agree, but just like tech, competent, compassionate professionals who know what they are doing do exist and as challenging as it is to find them, it is not impossible. Please do try.

Go with health and prosperity,
Pavel "Lispegistus" Penev

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 13, 2020

Thank you for trying to help, Pavel. You are actually helping, just not exactly in the way you thought you were. I'm pretty tired today (and hopefully, everyone will understand why) but I'll try to address one particular point, which I am glad you are giving me such a great opportunity to expand on. Sorry, this will be pretty badly written.

Unfortunately, in the 30?ish hours since I last spoke with him, things seem to have deteriorated somewhat with him intentionally doxing himself for some incomprehensible reason and trying to put the blame on others by insinuating that it was preemptive?! One screenshot I saw had him giving his address and warning people not to come uninvited. I'm sorry, that prompted me once again to insist you seek help.

You're verging into self-harm territory here. You claimed to have "come to your senses" quickly, but you have told me multiple times that you are "dangerously sane" is that what this means? Dangerously sane only some of the time?

Since times immemorial, I have always refused to use "privacy protection" services for WHOIS, systematically disabling them when possible. These days, some services perhaps wisely don't even support that option, or in any case, the information is obscured in many ways in many places and not particularly easy to find.

My reasoning was, quite simply, I really have nothing to hide, and I basically don't really mind if someone successfully maps out some of the domains that I own. This aligns with my usual ideals of radical transparency, and I thought, since I am a Privileged White Male™, I might as well use my opportunity to signal, "hey, I'm just a guy, I'm not some random troll who needs to hide, and there's really no legitimate reason anyone would want to hurt me anyway, so I don't really care to hide my personal information, whatever". Obviously, quite a lot of people couldn't even consider doing that, for a panoply of entirely legitimate reasons, including potential consequences including death in whatever countries and stuff.

The other big part of my reasoning was, well, I've lived in the exact same house for 34 fucking years, my entire fucking life, and frankly I pretty much want to live here forever, and like, A LOT of local people know exactly where I live, including old enemies or whatever, and there's my full address in like countless databases online or whatever. So like, the probability of that information eventually leaking, especially given my ever increasing "notoriety" is, like, literally 100%. So I figured there is not much point even trying to hide it. On top of that, pretty much nothing bad ever happens in the city where I live, like, the murder rate is 0 or something like that. Great place!


Enter Michał Herda (phoe).

See this fucking shit. (I called him out here.)

So. Back to his stupid fucking tweet. I probably don't even need to mention that "he just published what seems to be his complete address and phone details himself." is at least dangerously maliciously misleading, or frankly even a complete lie. I did deliberately disable WHOIS protection, but still.

On top of that, if you went to the page that the screenshot is from (at the time where I still had WHOIS protection disabled), if you have javascript enabled like a normal human being, then the page actually obscures the personal information with "REDACTED FOR PRIVACY", which is in fact one of the reasons why I thought leaving WHOIS protection off was really not a big deal. (I had no idea this feature was javascript-only.) So phoe deliberately misrepresents that the information is just automatically and always presented to everyone who visits that page, which is patently false. In fact, I immediately thought that his screenshot was fake (in part because of the obviously bogus "last updated" date) and almost publicly called him out, until I saved the URL in the Wayback Machine and saw that the information was actually there. What the fuck.

So. Per my initial reasoning above (100% chance of a leak, which had already definitely fallen in the worst possible hands), once that happened, it seemed a viable option to just publish my address in an attempt to preempt any other [CENSORED] like him from having an impact. So I rushed to finish my "whoami" project, which I already thought maybe I should publish before the end of the fundraiser since I thought it might possibly help, and it seemed like a logical place to publish my address. https://whoami.hexstream.xyz/

The initial version had a "I am not hiding" link to https://whoami.hexstream.xyz/dox/, which contained my real address and some warnings. After thinking about it for a few hours, though, I decided that this was a really fucking stupid idea, and would most likely result in a permanently decreased quality of life for no reason. Although my address is definitely already out there, that's already a big step if it's at least completely and grossly illegal to share it publicly, which is of course invalidated if I continuously and deliberately publish it myself for everyone to see. It's a numbers game... So right then I just immediately activate WHOIS protection for all my domains and I do my best to wipe out my address from my site, including the git history.

Enter Michał Herda (phoe). Again.

See this fucking shit. I called him out here.

Of course, see his disgusting fucking follow ups to his stupid fucking tweet. I don't even want to explain the gaslighting [CENSORED] in there, it ought to be pretty obvious.


So yeah. Am I not at least pretty close to dangerously sane, Pavel? [CENSORED]

Does anyone doubt that Michał Herda (phoe) is a dangerous scam artist anymore? No? Good.

@easye
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easye commented Dec 13, 2020

Since times immemorial, I have always refused to use "privacy protection" services for WHOIS, systematically disabling them when possible.

Privacy is not necessarily about hiding: it is a necessary space for the individual to grow. Without a private, we cannot conceive of having a public.

@lispegistus
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Yeah, that's really stupid. Your intelligence is failing you greatly here. That string of reasoning is barely coherent. And furthermore, after looking into Michał, who I didn't follow until you brought him up, I'm fairly certain he is not what you allege he is. That's just how us eastern Europeans are like when you manage to royally piss us off and not get the hint :)
Seriously, going after people the way you do with the leaps of logic you do not only hurts them but also hurts you because everybody sees how ridiculous your reasoning is. I explained to you how I think your mental models are failing you. I think the people who think you are malicious are somewhat justified, even though I think you're merely confused.
Not to mention how it looks from outside our lisp bubble, I've seen several people already claim that they've had significant difficulty getting lisp work approved by management because your non-sense pops up when they google the language. I didn't even consider that until very recently.

@luismbo
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luismbo commented Dec 13, 2020

I've seen several people already claim that they've had significant difficulty getting lisp work approved by management because your non-sense pops up when they google the language.

Do you have an example of a generic Common Lisp-related search query that turns up non-sense?

@lispegistus
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@luismbo no, I saw some tweets in a phoe thread claiming stuff like that.

@delaray
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delaray commented Dec 13, 2020 via email

@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Dec 14, 2020

edit 4, 27 january 2021:

On 13 december 2020, my twitter account got locked for no reason and I submitted my first appeal:

My tweet calls out relentless harasser phoe for basically doxing me. I received a notification yesterday that twitter agrees phoe violated the twitter rules.

On 18 december 2020, my first appeal was rejected for no reason.

On 27 december 2020, I submitted a second appeal:

This guy created his account specifically to harass me with countless insane slanders, and my tweet calls him out for DOXING ME, why lock my account for this???

As of 27 january 2021, I'm still awaiting the verdict on that second appeal.

Unfortunately, it seems like @HexstreamSoft, the Common Lispiest twitter since July 2012, which had never even been locked before, might now be locked forever because I called out my doxer who created his twitter account specifically to harass me.

(Twitter gives me the "option" of deleting my tweet, thereby pleading guilty, perjuring myself and getting a strike on my account, which is obviously completely out of the question.)


Essentially, twitter has officially agreed with me that Michał Herda (phoe) is a doxer.

phoe is officially a doxer

I have no idea why his account is still up. (edit: After reviewing the twitter rules a bit, it seems that he got a first strike, but he would need a second one for his account to be banned.)

Unfortunately, phoe successfully scammed twitter into locking my account and demanding that I delete my tweet calling out his doxing. I submitted an appeal and am awaiting the verdict. The tweet I called out is this one, I have no idea why it's still up (or why his almost 100% harassment-based account is still up even after he was found guilty of doxing).

I was planning to wait until I receive the verdict before determining my next steps and possibly making official announcements, but phoe started bragging about successfully scamming twitter into thinking I am the harasser for calling out his doxing...

edit: Oh, and the exact text of my appeal in their very character-limited text box was:

My tweet calls out relentless harasser phoe for basically doxing me. I received a notification yesterday that twitter agrees phoe violated the twitter rules.

("that" should have been "stating".)

edit 2: 100th (undeleted) comment in this thread, incidentally. Can't make this shit up...

edit 3: Also see my previous post about the doxing.

Hexstream added a commit to Hexstream/abc.hexstream.xyz that referenced this issue Jan 27, 2021
Hexstream added a commit to Hexstream/abc.hexstream.xyz that referenced this issue Jan 27, 2021
Hexstream added a commit to Hexstream/www.hexstreamsoft.com that referenced this issue Jan 27, 2021
Hexstream added a commit to Hexstream/www.hexstreamsoft.com that referenced this issue Jan 28, 2021
Hexstream added a commit to Hexstream/www.hexstreamsoft.com that referenced this issue Jan 28, 2021
Hexstream added a commit to Hexstream/abc.hexstream.xyz that referenced this issue Jan 28, 2021
@Hexstream
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Hexstream commented Mar 23, 2021

I'm the canary in the coal mine and I'm almost dead, just to let you know.

Of course, they'll kill me even more after this, and my life is almost 100% guaranteed to be a hilarious shitshow for the next few (several?) years unless at least some people wake the fuck up and decide to actually do something concrete and meaningful that will actually help the fucking situation, which is frankly almost fucking impossible.

I could probably save the situation pretty much entirely on my own (which would inevitably take much less effort than making people understand patently obvious truths) once my second web framework is ready, but without funding, I'm not sure if I'll even be (meaningfully) alive by then. The Common Lisp mafia already effectively shut down my twitter indefinitely for no reason, and there is no indication that they are going to stop there. Indeed, why would they refrain from destroying the Common Lisp community even more when they are facing nearly infinite upside and almost literally zero downside for doing so? There is a pretty significant chance that I'll lose nearly fucking everything meaningful in my life before I can even complete my second web framework.

So yeah. Bystander effect is literally a killer. If you're going to do something concrete and useful one day, then do it now, don't just wait while the shitshow gets ever more shitty.

edit, 24 march 2021: Phoe posted his first reasonable response in 3+ months, which is extremely surprising.

edit, 27 march 2021: Phoe already resumed posting yet more stupid fucking scams, which is extremely unsurprising.

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