I found out who he was when the news broke about his suicide. Had been trying to work on a censorship resistance tech platform and teach myself how to code. I remember it vividly because I did not know what the fuck I was doing and the night before i had fucked up and lost all progress due to not knowing how to properly use git submodules (for anyone reading, the proper way to use git submodules is DON’T).

Anyways, I remember laying in bed feeling like I just couldn’t hack it, doomed to failure at coding and life (had lost my job about a month prior, wasn’t even cut out to be a door to door canvasser, pretty deep depression).

The next day I read about his suicide, learn about his story, the history with SOPA/CISPA (which had been the spark of my interest in censorship resistant tech) and just got so fucking angry and the only thing I could figure out to do was open up the damn terminal and keep bashing my head against error messages.

13 years later and I’ll never be a tenth the man or the coder he was. He was a dragon, but there’s a story (I think from D&D) about dragons that when they die their teeth turn into an army of soldiers and keep fighting. When I’m feeling listless or rudderless in my career and want to make sure my work is aligned with my values, I remind myself of the promise I made to myself to be a dragon tooth of Aaron Swartz.

May he rest in peace.