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I absolutely loved _why’s work. It was hugely influential and wonderful.

Having said that, when they committed identity suicide they deleted everything they could. Preserving their work for archival purposes seems valuable, but I feel weird about operating a “museum” or “estate” dedicated to showing people where to read the stuff that _why tried to delete.

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Franz Kafka famously asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his unpublished manuscripts after Kafka's death. Brod did not honor this request, which is why we can now read "The Trial" and "The Castle".

So yeah. Preserving someone's work against their wishes is probably a faux pas - thankfully, someone else committed it, and you, me, and humanity at large can just enjoy the results.

I’m not sure if you know this or not, but when _why briefly came back for one more work, this example is one he engaged with directly.

This is mentioned in this article from a couple weeks ago: https://github.com/readme/featured/why-the-lucky-stiff

EDIT: Ooops, I had posted the title instead of the URL.

Hmm, seems like it’s more in character to say that he tried to delete it, wondering how much would surface later anyway.

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