3 ms·

Yeah, she's doing God's work and sci-hub is amazing but Elbakyan is an odd person who gets extremely paranoid and defensive, holds weird beliefs and often does

by Tenoke 5y ago

Yeah, she's doing God's work and sci-hub is amazing but Elbakyan is an odd person who gets extremely paranoid and defensive, holds weird beliefs and often does things that are over the top.

swiley 5y ago
It might not be possible to run a site like sci hub without being extremely paranoid all the time.
blagie 5y ago
Being attacked leads to paranoid-like behavior. Your Bayesian filters go all wonky when you know they're actually out to get you. It pollutes everything in your life; you need to be suspicious of everyone and everything. The other thing about a constant series of attacks -- without support to field them -- is that you DO misidentify things, and sometimes respond imperfectly. There are 24 hours in a day. Sometimes you'll miss something, and other times, you'll overreact, or just react inappropriately. Talk to anyone with a stalker. Now imagine that stalker has a billion dollar war chest, and can hire a PI to trail you on a whim, corrupt government officials, or wield more-or-less infinite resources compared to you. In terms of weird beliefs, we all got 'em. The difference is mostly with regards to whether others find out about them. I haven't been in the same position as Elbakyan, but I've been in a sufficiently analogous one that I don't see what she's doing as anything other than human.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  Honestly, I'm very close to sending her a few btc. Although my employer would hate me for using it, sci hub is just an absolutely brilliant, internationally known godsend. One of the things that publishers have started doing of late is just linking the "pdf" button to things that are not pdfs. I have legal access to basically every journal article I could ever want, but sci-hub provides a much better product: you actually just get the pdf with one button, and no telemetry crap either. There's even an awesome grease/tampermonkey script to provide (small, inobtrusive) inline links to sci-hub here: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/370246-sci-hub-button https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/370246-sci-hub-button. She really is a saint. I hope we realise that....
  - vixen99 5y ago
    Spot on! Thank you for that. Some work I do would be sunk without her and we know there are countless independent researchers who could say the same thing.
- teddyh 5y ago
  “Paranoia strikes deep: Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away. ” For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1967

by Tenoke 5y ago

Yeah, she's doing God's work and sci-hub is amazing but Elbakyan is an odd person who gets extremely paranoid and defensive, holds weird beliefs and often does things that are over the top.

swiley 5y ago

It might not be possible to run a site like sci hub without being extremely paranoid all the time.

blagie 5y ago

Being attacked leads to paranoid-like behavior. Your Bayesian filters go all wonky when you know they're actually out to get you. It pollutes everything in your life; you need to be suspicious of everyone and everything. The other thing about a constant series of attacks -- without support to field them -- is that you DO misidentify things, and sometimes respond imperfectly. There are 24 hours in a day. Sometimes you'll miss something, and other times, you'll overreact, or just react inappropriately. Talk to anyone with a stalker. Now imagine that stalker has a billion dollar war chest, and can hire a PI to trail you on a whim, corrupt government officials, or wield more-or-less infinite resources compared to you. In terms of weird beliefs, we all got 'em. The difference is mostly with regards to whether others find out about them. I haven't been in the same position as Elbakyan, but I've been in a sufficiently analogous one that I don't see what she's doing as anything other than human.

azalemeth 5y ago
Honestly, I'm very close to sending her a few btc. Although my employer would hate me for using it, sci hub is just an absolutely brilliant, internationally known godsend. One of the things that publishers have started doing of late is just linking the "pdf" button to things that are not pdfs. I have legal access to basically every journal article I could ever want, but sci-hub provides a much better product: you actually just get the pdf with one button, and no telemetry crap either. There's even an awesome grease/tampermonkey script to provide (small, inobtrusive) inline links to sci-hub here: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/370246-sci-hub-button https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/370246-sci-hub-button. She really is a saint. I hope we realise that....
- vixen99 5y ago
  Spot on! Thank you for that. Some work I do would be sunk without her and we know there are countless independent researchers who could say the same thing.
teddyh 5y ago
“Paranoia strikes deep: Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away. ” For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1967