
Stories About My Brother - danso
https://jezebel.com/stories-about-my-brother-1835651181
======
danso
It's not even in the top 10 most astonishing things about this story, but the
amount of money the author's brother made in bitcoin while working hard at the
startup game is astonishing:

> _“He wrote a white paper on cryptocurrency and why Ethereum was going to
> skyrocket,” my dad told me. “A number of his friends became rich off of
> him.”_

> _None of us know how much Yush made, or where the bitcoin is now, but
> through his investments, he was able to bankroll at least $50,000 per month
> on running his new start-up, his former business partner, Nate Argetsinger,
> told me. Susan Farrington, a former CMU administrator and so-called “college
> mom” to Yush, told me that when she was between jobs, Yush suspected that
> she might be struggling._

> _He called her up one day and said, “By my calculations, you are probably
> having some financial difficulties by now.” After much persistence, he
> transferred $10,000 worth of bitcoin to Farrington. “Honestly nobody has
> done anything like that for me,” she told me as her voice cracked. “It made
> him happy.”_

~~~
pjc50
> None of us know how much Yush made, or where the bitcoin is now

Almost certainly the secrets died unrecoverably with him.

~~~
ur-whale
It's actually a feature of Bitcoin I really like: unless you carefully plan
for your death, no one will be able to inherit your coins.

Inheriting money is the worst possible thing if you believe societies should
be meritocracies.

~~~
jcims
Eh, the idea that people shouldn't be able to control what happens to their
assets after their passing is, to me, even worse.

~~~
dooglius
You can, it just takes a bit of work. In fact, you can do so much more because
bitcoin transfer can be done in a way that is opaque to tax agencies. It is
entirely possible that that is what happened here: I don't get the sense that
the money would have gone to the author, or that her family would tell her if
they did get the money.

~~~
jcims
I'm more replying to the parent that says inheritance is the 'worst possible
thing'.

------
mikeymz
>Pulmonary embolisms are rare in young people. In the United States, they are
even less common among Asian-Americans than white people.

This is a strange opener given that the embolism was related to the limb
lengthening. Not quite a bolt of lightening from the blue

~~~
thom
It's a narrative device.

------
scarmig
I wonder if she was able to find his Reddit and Hacker News posts. He went
under the handle "thebadplus". Nothing particularly interesting under either,
though.

Moving essay, and I feel for her loss. It does leave me thinking of him as an
enigma, though, and I can't help but wonder why. Yes, he was an enigma to her
by the time he died. But she interviewed lots of people who were active in his
life when he died and has pretty much nothing to relay on from them. Did they
really have no opinions of him? Did he leave no records or discussions of why,
exactly, he wanted limb lengthening surgery?

And he wrote and published an essay about her family, presumably discussing
his feelings about her, but she didn't feel fit to link it? While at the same
time thought it was worth the space to dig up an ancient email of his that
references another website, from which she feels the need to quote an
unrelated passage?

This essay seems much more interested in pigeonholing his tragic death into a
rubric of "victim of hateful white supremacist MRA thought" instead of
allowing him his own voice. She should consider, perhaps, that responsibility
for his death might fall on broader social trends instead of relying on
simplistic explanations pointing to a maligned sect which it's unclear he even
adhered to when he died.

------
mjfl
heartbreaking. I don't really agree with any of the rationalizations Yush's
sister puts forth here, as I'm sure he wouldn't have either, but... at least
in this age of political division, family bonds prioritized over disagreements
in the end.

~~~
jcims
>at least in this age of political division, family bonds prioritized over
disagreements in the end.

Eh, sort of. This reads to me like a long-winded explanation as to why her
brother was smart in many ways but really too dumb to see that he was wrong
about the source of his insecurity, that the true cause for all of his grief
was not only completely outside the control of her tribe of identity, that it
was actually a common enemy that she continues to battle.

~~~
Scoundreller
> but really too dumb to see that he was wrong about the source of his
> insecurity

Was he? He critically appraised the evidence: height is proportional to
various forms of success, and made a plan to get taller.

Sure one could convince themselves that it’s not a problem and be less
successful for it on the metrics one cares about.

But that’s easier to do if you don’t have some void in life that seems hard to
fill.

~~~
bambataa
The writer touched on this point when she mentioned him analysing the physical
world and her analysing social structures. It seemed that he approached this
as merely a technical problem he needed to fix rather than analysing the
underlying structures.

I’m into speculation here, but perhaps he lacked the intellectual breadth to
consider other angles to what was going on. I find that technically successful
people often think that complex social issues can be reduced to and solved as
technical problems. That in my opinion misses huge amounts of complexity and
nuance.

I don’t think it is correct to say he critically appraised the situation, at
least sufficiently. Would we think the same if eg a black person sees that
white people were more successful professionally and therefore resolved to
whiten their skin? Would we all just say “sure, that’s what you’ve got to do!”
and not wonder why they need to in the first place? Where should the change
come from?

Of course, that said many people feel to need to conform to a situation while
wanting it to be different. It’s messy. Height is a particularly odd case as
it’s on the border of being an unchangeable physical characteristic. Maybe the
real reason he wasn’t taken seriously was because of his race but he knew he
couldn’t change that?

~~~
mjfl
Does “the patriarchy” = complexity and nuance to you? Because in my opinion
that is the most vague and least nuanced explanation in existence.

~~~
bambataa
Oh no, not at all. I just mean questioning why he felt the need to be taller,
rather than accepting the need and moving straight to the technical “how” part
of what operation to get.

------
jackvalentine
> Westrich said that she sees many more men with height dysphoria than women.
> Men she’s counseled, she said, often “feel like they’re at a disadvantage.
> They feel like they’re not taken as seriously in terms of work environment.
> They feel like romantic partners don’t see them as being as attractive as
> they could be if they were taller,”

Short people, ugly people... these things definitely have a real effect on
people's careers and lives and they'll be the last to get their 'social
justice cause d'jour' moment.

~~~
bambataa
“Cause d’jour” (du jour) is rather dismissive. Why do you say this? Do you
think that there are too many groups clamouring for their rights? Why do you
think this might be the case?

~~~
jackvalentine
If you want to take it as dismissive, that’s on you. Please don’t go making
assumptions about what I believe if I didn’t outright say it.

It’s not my place to compare the many people clamouring for dignity, but I am
pointing out that there is definitely an unwritten hierarchy in play here.

~~~
bambataa
So what was your intention?

~~~
jackvalentine
There are many causes and only some of them see the light on any given day.
Our society has some value hierarchy for which ones.

~~~
bambataa
How do you see this hierarchy? I’ll be frank - it seems to be the groups of
people who have been most marginalised for centuries or longer, and the amount
of time we’ve spent talking about them is far less than they’ve been
oppressed.

~~~
jackvalentine
I'm having trouble understanding what you're trying to say and so can't answer
your question.

~~~
bambataa
I want you to set out the “unwritten hierarchy” as you see it, and if possible
why you think it’s in that form.

“How do you see” is admittedly not that clear. I just want to know what it is.

~~~
jackvalentine
I've given the only examples I wish to give - short and ugly people are
somewhere down the order of 'things we advocate for' Probably near the bottom.

'How you see' was actually the clearest part of your post, the second half is
what threw me off.

~~~
romwell
Aren't the causes we fight for correlated?

In a world where the ideal man doesn't have to conform to the traditional
stereotypes or masculinity (tall and strong), short people would have far
fewer reasons to worry about their height, don't you think?

And the mere fact that women don't have to conform to similar expectations
should tell one that the cause of short people is very much tied to breaking
up sex stereotypes and roles that we have today.

Would you disagree?

~~~
jackvalentine
I would point out I'm not exclusively referring to men here, which it appears
you've taken it as. Short and ugly women also have lesser luck in life.

I do agree that in general the loosening of the shackles of societal
expectation will make space for changes, but I don't think it would actually
have an appreciable effect.

------
gomijacogeo
Not that it likely matters now, but the brother sounds like a high-functioning
schizophrenic - super-bright kid morphing into an increasingly erratic and
alienated adult. Especially without any hallucinations, it's tough to diagnose
and looks like a mix of depression, mania, OCD, etc. There's the flight-of-
ideas component that frequently allows for great creativity, but frustration
as the world can't keep up with their changing visions and priorities. They
also tend to be narrative-builders - nothing just happens, everything has a
cause, often malignant, byzantine, and vast. Because they always feel 'on' and
'deliberate' everything else must be functioning that way too, so everything
is a personal attack. They increasingly can't work with others and try to work
as brilliant loners or establish themselves as the visionary leader.

------
eugeniub
One of the most moving pieces I have ever read.

------
shusson
> Rather than blaming a greater system of patriarchy and white supremacy for
> these double standards, under which we all suffer, he blamed feminists like
> me.

I can't help but feel that even through a tragedy, the author still hasn't
budged from her side of views.

~~~
pjc50
I'd hope that this isn't going to become the story, but .. is she wrong?

~~~
shusson
I don't know, and I don't think which side is right is really important. More
that I felt that neither side compromised even through tragedy (just basing it
from this article).

~~~
nicoburns
> I don't think which side is right is really important

Sometimes one side is just right. Compromise isn't always appropriate.

------
newnewpdro
TL;DR: Brother with height insecurities gets rich off cryptocurrency, pays for
leg extension surgery, dies rather suddenly of pulmonary embolism during
recovery.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
You forgot to mention that white nationalists are to blame.

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. We've had to ask you this before.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
I apologize, that was not my intent. I withdraw my comment.

~~~
dang
Appreciated!

------
xenihn
>When my brother died, I was too shattered to write his obituary. There is
little record of his 29 years of life; it simply vanished. When I type “Yush
Gupta,” Google autofills “Yush Gupta death,” a brutal reminder that even on
the internet, a space where nothing is forgotten, Yush is a mirage, slowly
disappearing.

Something tells me that the author of this article wouldn't exactly be
thrilled to come across her brother's posts on lookism or reddit. She should
be grateful that she can't find anything.

~~~
brosinante
It's still her brother, and it's what made him, him. Why does grieving have to
do with being thrilled in any way - we take the bad with the good.

------
ramraj07
Why does it sound like it's always sleazy people who make money off of
Bitcoin?

~~~
ur-whale
Not entirely sure what is sleazy about this young man. Quite the opposite from
what I read.

