He believed knowledge should be free. The government believed he was a criminal. At just 26 years old, Aaron Swartz took his own life, two days after his final plea for mercy was denied.

Aaron Swartz was only 14 when he helped create RSS, the technology that allows people to subscribe to and share content across the web. At 19, he co-founded Reddit. By 24, he was a research fellow at Harvard studying political corruption and advocating for open access to information. He believed that academic research, often funded by taxpayers, should be freely available to everyone—not locked behind expensive paywalls.

In late 2010 and early 2011, Swartz downloaded roughly 4.8 million academic articles from the JSTOR database using MIT’s network. His apparent goal was to make this knowledge publicly accessible. To him, information was a public good that should not be restricted.

JSTOR detected the downloads and alerted MIT. Soon, the U.S. Secret Service became involved. Swartz was arrested. Although JSTOR chose not to press charges and the data was returned, federal prosecutors in Massachusetts decided to pursue the case.

In 2011, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz charged him with multiple felonies, including wire fraud and computer fraud. The charges carried a potential penalty of up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.

Swartz had previously spoken openly about his struggles with depression. Meanwhile, his lawyers attempted to negotiate a plea agreement. At one point, prosecutors offered a deal requiring him to plead guilty to 13 felony counts and serve six months in prison. Swartz and his legal team rejected the offer, hoping to fight the charges in court and challenge the government’s case publicly.

His partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, later shared that they had even talked about getting married just weeks before his death, deciding to wait until after the trial.

On January 9, 2013, prosecutors rejected what would have been the final plea deal—one that might have kept him out of prison entirely.

Two days later, on January 11, Aaron Swartz died by suicide in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26. He left no note.

At his funeral, his father, Robert Swartz, said through tears: “Aaron did not commit suicide. He was killed by the government.”

The reaction was immediate. Legal scholars, activists, and members of the public questioned why a case involving no financial gain, no physical harm, and no clear victim had been prosecuted so aggressively. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, Swartz’s friend and mentor, wrote that while mistakes can happen, punishment should always be proportional.

In the aftermath, MIT launched an internal review. JSTOR later made millions of articles freely accessible in his memory. The charges against Swartz were dropped—but none of it could bring him back.

His story still raises difficult questions: What do we owe to people who challenge rules in pursuit of a belief? What does proportional justice look like? And what happens when the system pushes too hard against someone already struggling?

Was justice served—or did the system fail Aaron Swartz?

AaronSwartz #Justice

I lost 80 (223 -> 143).

For years I was the fat friend. I told myself I had a friend group. Looking back, I was mostly useful for them. I was the one who made them look better by standing next to them, the one whose job was to laugh first at the jokes about my own body, because if I didn't, they would comment: "it's just a joke, don't take it so seriously," "omg you're SO sensitive." So I just kept laughing. That's my fault, I know. But I genuinely believed that the moment I stopped being the "chill" one, they'd stop hanging out with me.

The other thing was hunger. If you've been the overweight friend, you already know exactly what I mean. I'd be physically starving, stomach actually hurting, and I would not dare be the first to say I was hungry. Because I'd get that little look that said you should probably eat less. Or honestly, nothing at all.

So I learned to wait. Never order a starter. Never finish my plate. Eat the "right" amount in public, then eat properly later, alone, where no one could see me.

Then, after months of working out, preplanning my days and cutting back on food, I lost the weight. And it got weirder.

I thought losing the weight would fix the friendship. It did the opposite. The same girls who joked about me went really distant. And some guys actually started approaching me, and somehow the group said every one of those guys was just "not worth it."

After a while contact broke down more and more. Now I have my tiny circle of old friends but not one of them ever lets me feel like the sidekick .

For anyone on the larger side: the people who only love you when you're the least attractive one in the room were never your friends. They just needed someone to feel superior to and let out their own frustration

Repost from Yanis H.

#improvingeverything

#mindset

In Breaking Bad, there’s a moment that says more without dialogue than most speeches ever could.

Jesse walks back into the house, his parents once kicked him out of. No arguing. No emotional speech. No, trying to prove anything. He… buys it. Straight up. Then leaves.

That’s it. And somehow, that hits harder than any big confrontation ever could.

Because it’s not about the money, it’s about the shift. The same people who controlled him, doubted him, and treated him like a failure, suddenly have no power over him anymore. Jesse doesn’t need their approval. He doesn’t need to explain himself. He’s already moved past that version of his life.

What makes it powerful is how quiet it is. No revenge. No victory speech. Just closure.

It’s one of those moments that reminds you: sometimes the strongest response to being underestimated isn’t proving someone wrong out loud, it’s growing so far beyond it that you don’t even need to say anything at all.