Various
Website Visitors Guestbook
A roundup of all the praise, critiques and other notes we've received
For original texts on the website
For archived texts on the website
For original texts on the website
If this project had a novelty bookshop cafe where you could see archivists typing away, digitizing old badly scanned books, printing them out, and filling the shelves with newly restored philosophy books, what do you think the visitor's guestbook would look like? And what note would you leave? E.g. After a day of reading and sipping sugarcane juice on a balcony looking over the Mekong river.
Feel free to click the little 'writer's pen' symbol to add to this page with your own note about your experience with using the website.
Or someone else can potentially add the comment for you, if you make your comment on one of our discussion spaces on Discord or Matrix, tweet or DM us on Twitter or email thetedkarchive@proton.me.
Acknowledgements & Citations
Your website was one of the best archival websites that I've ever conducted research on. No suggestions from me at the moment, just keep up the good work! ...
Credits (music, sources, etc.): pastebin.com/gedVQ3fm ...
VISUALS ...
Ted’s 1958 Autobiography
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-1958-autobiography ...
Ted’s Newspaper Mentions Before His Imprisonment
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-ted-s-newspaper-mentions-before-his-imprisonment ...
SOURCES ...
The Ted K Archive
thetedkarchive.com/special/index
Truth Versus Lies (Original Draft)
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-truth-versus-lies-original-draft
1958 Autobiography
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-1958-autobiography
1959 Autobiography
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-1959-autobiography
1979 Autobiography
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-ted-kaczynski-s-1979-autobiography
1988 Autobiography
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-1988-autobiography
Ted’s Journals
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-journals
Ted’s Salt Lake City Journal
archive.org/details/ae.-teds-journals_202303
Ted Kaczynski's Journal of Early Crimes
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-journal-of-early-crimes
The Bombings & Communications of Ted Kaczynski as part of his Terror Campaign
I would like to mention the owner of the Ted K Archive who has done a fantastic job in uploading many of Teds work, along with others into one large library. Without the archive, I would struggle to find the ideas and views of different people I have mentioned, as well as go into more detail on Ted's.
Theodore John Kaczynski was born into a family of Polish immigrants living in Chicago on May 22nd, 1942. Personal writings seized and published by the FBI, give a great deal of insight into his early life and upbringing. These writings would show that his parents were cold and harsh. His incredible intellect and advanced academic status would isolate him from his high school peers and aroused jealousy from his younger brother David. They would also detail his homoerotic experiences as a teenager and his problems approaching women, as well as his dissatisfaction and occasional anger at society.2 I think it is worth noting that Kaczynski would often express a rather misogynistic, passive-aggressive attitude towards women, which he would regret and apologise for in later life.3
Kaczynski attended Harvard University on scholarship, aged only sixteen, and would earn his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics. During this period, he became a test subject in the psychological experiments of Dr.Henry Murray. Many have speculated that these experiments were part of the MK Ultra programme ran by the CIA. However, Kaczynski expressed scepticism towards this theory and also stated that the experiment had little influence on him.4 ...
2. Kaczynski, Ted. (2023). Ted Kaczynski’s 1979 Autobiography. [Online]. The Ted K Archive. Available at: https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-ted-kaczynski-s-1979-autobiography [Accessed 15 July 2023].
3. Kaczynski, Ted. (N/A). Apology to Women. [Online]. The Ted K Archive. Last Updated: N/A. Available at: https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-apology-to-women [Accessed 15 July 2023].
4. The Ted K Archive. (N/A). Uziel, Alex & Kaczynski, Ted. [Online]. thetedkarchive. Last Updated: N/A. Available at: https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/alex-uziel-ted-kaczynski-debunking-the-ted-kaczynski-mk-ultra [Accessed 15 July 2023]
After authorities finally persuaded Ted that it was his brother who had turned him in, Kaczynski denounced David as a ‘Judas’ (Kaczynski, 1999) and vowed to never speak with him again. He never did.
Although David Kaczynski’s decision might have saved the lives of those on Kaczynski’s list of targets, the Unabomber continued to kill – long after his arrest and conviction – through indirect means. That is, the 1995 publication of Kaczynski’s manifesto, combining a radical, anti-technology ideology with a call to revolution, mobilized others to violence. ...
Kaczynski, T. J. (1999). Truth versus lies. Ted K Archive.
https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted- kaczynski-truth-versus-lies-original-draft
Episode 40: Unmasking the Unabomber
Delve into the dark world of Theodore J. Kaczynski and his relevance in today's society. Explore the motives, isolation, and the terror he inflicted on a nation in this compelling episode! ...
Sources:
Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski by Chris Waits
Madman in the Woods by Jamie Gehring
thetedkarchive.com/special/index ...
Praise
For the website
Anonymous
Your work on the archive is incredibly impressive. ... you've done more extensive research on this topic than anyone else on the planet - you put the so-called 'scholars' to shame. ... As always, thanks a lot for your help!
Sunna
I am seeing the archive project now and it looks like exactly what's needed at this point in time.
Good luck, and thank you.
thetedkarchive.com has an immense amount of his work, including correspondence and a lot more. I also recommend his work condemning eco fascism and the truth about primitive life and the systems neatest trick.
This is a really impressively organized and found list, and the maker of the website really deserves some props.
That being said, I’m always a bit… befuddled at a lot of analytical looks at the Unabomber. I think many people give him far, far too much credit (presumably being good at math and being able to make bombs that sometimes work is enough for a lot of people to call a person some genius in all fields).
The Unabomber to me has always come off as a deeply half baked person trying to wax poetic to dress his fairly rote conservative views as this complex philosophy. He was a burnout throwing a tantrum when he realized he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was, and all the ruminating about life in his cabin distracts from his main motivation being a pretty banal hatred of homosexuals, race mixing, and liberal academics who didn’t appreciate him enough because he was good at math and bad at most everything else.
I dunno. I just don’t really like seeing a lot of the revival of interest in him like he has any actual merit as a philosopher. Aside from his means of killing people through bombs - he’s just yet another closeted conservative guy killing people for being happier than he is
Candace DeLong talks about him in her podcast, too. It's good to have source material to read, thanks!
I'm working on a thing detailing relations between religious thought and loosely 'environmentalism.' Ted's an important figure to address in regards to anti industrial thought.
Going to try to look around for you. Otherwise, this website is home to a lot of his works and works related to his philosophy. Feel free to check there for anything related to what you need.
Excellent website, thank you.
I'm introduced and quoted inaccurately, but here's a fairly cool news story that interviews a diverse array of people and links to the website 🙂
Pretty good mix of perspectives here, it's nice that they included how different groups take different parts of his philosophy that they identify the most with, while not ignoring or sugar coating the extremist aspects too. I also hadn't realized there were so many MRAs on the archive, I'll have to take a look at that but I get the feeling they'd hate me since I lean radfem, lol. If you are helping them feel less alienated then it's a good thing you are doing.
I think that MRA comment was the quote I was thinking was more innacurate, I was likely talking about Ted K fans on reddit where I'd clicked onto their profile after talking to them. Hopefully the archive and conversations provoked by the texts on it are having a good effect though, like the convo people had on here about depression a while back. Also I am constantly amusing myself when I add very tenuously related anarcho-feminist texts to the archive that I know Ted would have hated lol.
Lol yeah that is no surprise then on Reddit. I think the organization of the article had me misread that. I do enjoy reading every related text that gets added nonetheless.
Emmanuele Jonathan Pilia
I just wanted to say: thank you. I am an Italian anarchist publisher, publisher and anarchist (well, I am still a pubilsher while I am an anarchist, and still an anarchist while I am a publisher...). We are translating the entire opera omnia by Uncle Ted, and I found several interesting material in your archive, so... Thank you! For once, our edition will be not an "economic edition", but a precious one. I'll be happy to send you a copy (even it will be in Italian) when the first book will be released. We will start, of course, from the manifesto. Then, we will continue publishing the rest of his work. Again: thank you!
What anti-antifa boomers think No Platform is:
"Bad ideas are scary and dangerous and should not be engaged with because people are weak and will faint on contact. Everyone should live in ignorance and also anyone we don't like should be banned from speaking."
What No Platform actually is:
Everyone should critically read what reactionaries write (formally and informally)! But social framings shape subcultural norms around what's within and outside the overton window. Helping display someone on a stage functions as legitimization.
If you go to an anarchist infoshop you expect to find either exclusively anarchists or a spread of ideas that reflects who's inside and outside the circle of discourse anarchists take as legitimate.
If there's a wall of Maoist texts that's just a Maoist bookstore doing entryism.
If, for instance, you're a certain anarchist bookstore in the 80s and you stock NAMBLA periodicals, that's not mere decontextualized "provision of information," that's a social statement around affinities and norms that is read loud and clear by new anarchists that wander in.
It says "we might disagree with NAMBLA but they are an established part of our discursive circle and subcultural space." Endorsement, normalization, and legitimization is inherent. Texts are not read in isolation, they are presented in contexts that declare and enforce norms.
I've shared a literal stage with people whose politics I've vehemently opposed, but who were validly within the movement.
I've also repeatedly refused to debate tankies on a stage or at an event. And I've repeatedly made fun of Bookchin for having debated nazis on a stage.
When organizers scheduled me to debate a fascist at a transhumanist conference in 2015 I raised hell, got the panel canceled and organized attendees to leave early.
I also checked in with a couple venerable antifascist groups and asked for insight and feedback on strategy.
No Platform absolutely does not mean Don't Read Fascists. Antifascists endlessly beg you to actually read fascists. It's actually really annoying that anti-antifa folks don't know much about what fascists believe and argue!
But there are ethics around how to go about that.
For instance, everyone should know about and read Bronze Age Mindset (by Bronze Age Pervert / Costin Alamariu), as it's one of the most influential and widely read fascist texts today, shared virally among young republicans.
But you shouldn't fucking BUY it and give him money!
Ted K has strong overlap with fascist movements and has been explicitly opposed to anarchism for decades. Yet you should know what he argues and there's a website with a complete archive of his works, but the entire site's framing is clearly hostile to and critical of him.
Framing matters. When you put Ted K in an "anarchist library" you're declaring "Ted K is inside anarchism". If you put a unnoticeable "non-anarchist" tag on it you're declaring "still within the circle of texts we think are anarchist-adjacent, in-group and respectable enough"
There are, after all, infinite "anarchist-adjacent" things. Mao came from anarchism, but if your "anarchist" library contains every maoist text you're normalizing maoism.
There are tons of marxists, libertarians and liberals that anarchists engage with or are influenced by...
If an "anarchist" bookstore puts The Many Headed Hydra or Mumford in the window no one's gonna blink but if they put Mao, that's a fucking maoist bookstore. And if they put Hayek, that's an ancap bookstore. If you put Ted K in the window you're gonna get a lot of fascist vistors.
Antifascists have spent decades working out the ethics and the norms around No Platforming through consideration and worldwide trial and error.
Unfortunately there were some "radicals" who studiously ignored them and then got surprised to encounter those norms in 2016.
For original texts on the website
This is amazing stuff! It's like getting to sit for hours and hours with the old dead crank himself, unloading all his pettiest, most exquisite venom! all the tiny details of family drama, ted trying to remember the exact moment when he started hating his parents at like, age 10?! Who the fuck would ever care about all this except weirdos like me!
Beautiful work! I will use this document to checkmate every edgelord who crosses my path from now until I die! bless your black heart
Very interesting letter, in that I read no sign of craziness here at all, nor of violent extremism. This letter could have been written by Greta Thunberg. Much of it is obviously true (every major technological advance is also a social experiment), and a useful reminder for scientists to take one step back from their daily business every now and then. To me, this shows that insanity is not required, nor a sufficient explanation, for how people with legitimate concerns about tech and the environment can turn into murderous extremists.
Does anyone have an article which goes into at least some detail on Ted's lifestyle/routine ...
Here is your answer, Joy Richards did an interview with Ted on January 2001 (plus Joy Richards was Ted's longest love interest + she died of cancer) and this is the best explanation done by ted.
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-ted-kaczynski-s-low-tech-lifestyle
Thanks for the quick reply, indeed that greatly exceeds what I was able to find myself, can't wait to dive in.
This is the first article I thought of as well. One of my favorite pieces to read, I love the picture it paints and the descriptions he gives of how his skills improved with time and effort.
David Oranchak
I appreciate the links to the real codes - I've been trying to find more examples of his real enciphered messages.
This is an incredible account and thank you for this info
Elmo
I do not have the resources to refute things on the FAQ that I strongly question such as the section on bisexuality and transvestitism, the rest seems like it doesn't bring the ideology into disrepute, but I'm rather pleased in the other regards that you portrayed him slightly positively.
What an interesting topic.
Very good source material, thank you.
For archived texts on the website
I hadn't any idea these were archived there. I'm glad to know though. Looks great.
... New issue from kaczynskist anti-tech zine, "Anti-Tech Quarterly," previously known as, "Garden." ...
To read our previous articles you can go to:
archive.org/details/@gardentjk
or
thetedkarchive.com/library/anonymous-garden
documentcloud.org/documents/2696534-Ted-Kaczynski-on-911-Politics-and-Policy
Is there a link to an organized collection of all these PDFs? Sifting through search results for his letters on that site is a nightmare 😵💫
Yep:
thetedkarchive.com/library/primary-source-documents-on-ted-k#toc27
This is great. Thank you!
Love the sass.
Wow! Impactful and so thoughtfully written.
Critiques
For the website
Celcius
Hey,
Hope you're well.
I'm writing regarding the new website you're hosting, The Ted K Archive.
With respect to you and everything you've done over the years, I think you've made a mistake hosting this particular site. So far Ishkah, the character behind this site, has:
-- linked to texts hidden behind his Patreon account.
-- uploaded pieces celebrating what he calls 'good prisons' like in Norway (his words).
-- uploaded Siege and other neo-Nazi material.
-- uploaded the late ITS stuff that even theanarchistlibrary.org wouldn't upload.
-- uploaded a ton of his own writing, including a piece where he argues that insurrectionary thought is a 'pipeline' to eco-extremism.
No matter how he tries to dress it up, his archive is an ANTI-anarchist project, not an anarchist one. Ishkah's bizarre attempt at 'deprogramming' people (his words) was better suited to his WordPress blog: activistjourneys.wordpress.com
C
Anonymous
hey i think i'll start an archive called thenoamchomskyarchive.com and fill it with a load of my own shitty writing and a ton of other writing that noam chomsky would obviously not want attached to his name
... ted k is an actual person (an anarchist POW, no less) who you're shitting all over.
Kevin Tucker
Ted sucks. I think this is just all bottom dwelling hype.
Anti-Tech Collective
This project is being undertaken without Dr. Kaczynski's or the University of Michigan's permission and in violation of copyright law. The owner of the site (a pro-tech leftist) only intends to nullify and counteract the anti-tech movement through this site, and the "critiques" of Dr. Kaczynski's ideas are silly, feeble, and insipid. It would be best for the movement if the site were taken down entirely, but we will leave that work to the author's, Fitch & Madison Publishers', and the University of Michigan's respective legal counsels. Since we are fostering the emergence of the anti-tech movement we have no interest in assisting you in any way.
Fitch & Maddison + Co-signers
A Warning about The Ted K Archive
It has recently come to our attention that a pro-tech leftist that goes by the name Theo Slade has created a website titled “The Ted K Archive” in order to upload all of Kaczynski’s writings online against Kaczynski’s wishes and in violation of the author’s copyrights. Slade also intends for this site to serve as a platform to critique Kaczynski’s ideas and turn individuals away from the cause against the techno-industrial system for the sake of wild Nature. While Slade and his collaborators have gone around to various online communities and individuals that have some affinity with Kaczynski’s ideas in an attempt to solicit help under the guise of creating a project that could be beneficial to the incipient movement, make no mistake, their actions are duplicitous and the overall group behind the website only attempts to nullify the nascent movement against the techno-industrial system for the sake of wild Nature.
In the “About This Project” section of their website (thetedkarchive.com/special/about-this-project) it is made clear that this site is nothing more than a sad attempt to harm the cause against the techno-industrial system for the sake of wild Nature:
... we’re hoping the website can work to draw people in with similar politics to [Kaczysnki] and similar mental health issues frankly. Then for the cold hard reality of the primary source reading material, the epic-ness of the suggested reading material and the inviting discussion spaces connected to the website, to all have a deprogramming effect and be a mental health support.
And as for Slade's collaborators, it seems that the majority are pro-tech as well. "We, the librarians who bought the website domain, are pro-tech anarchists, but we just find his life story and impact really interesting."
While their critiques of Kaczynski's writings are so silly that they are not even worth countering (as any reasonably rational and intelligent person would not be swayed by the "arguments" put forth in them), the attempt to by these leftists to have control over Kaczynski's writings (again, expressly against his wishes) is concerning. Those that want to foster the healthy growth of the movement against the techno-industrial system for the sake of wild Nature should denounce and disavow the project, and take steps to avoid any collaboration with it.
Signed,
Elmo
The people behind that site are very underhanded and utterly bizarre. You'd think they'd spend their time on trying to actually establish their little socialist technotopia rather than besmirching a relatively niche ideologue.
qpooqpoo
most of the stuff on the ted k archive looks like it was published without the authors permission
it would be a shame if the authors authorized agents were, as we speak, preparing to take legal action against them, and force them to pay their legal fees in addition to shut down the whole website.
that would be a real shame...
lol
yes. lol.
The University of Michigan will probably go after that website too...
such a shame...
Welcome, qpooqpoo. We hope you've brought pizza.
I have nothing to offer you except death.
For original texts on the website
Anonymous
Surely, for this struggle, we cannot justify disarming our community’s mental health capacity any more than we could justify disbanding the police or the intelligence services.
Dreadlocked white techbro shills for police yet again.
Much more interestingly than this list is thetedkarchive.com being hosted on anarchistlibraries.net and including straightup fashy shit like this: thetedkarchive.com/library/a-text-dump-on-bronze-age-pervert
For archived texts on the website
Anonymous
I wonder if you ever considered that someone like Daniel McGowan (an ex anarchist POW) would not want their writing on a website like yours? Where are those 'ethics' that you're always going on about, ishkah?
Your website includes doxes of people who you don't like, which i guess you think is fine because you're 'doing good' or something, but how can you also dox their spouse? is a woman guilty of the crimes her husband committed in your eyes?
Anonymous
Your website includes doxes of more people than just those two (who might just be two random latinx people for all you know).
You'd know which doxes I was talking about if you'd actually read any of the texts you've been uploading.
Other notes
There is an archive online that has many writings written by Ted Kaczynski and writings related to his ideas. Some writings I do not personally enjoy, but there are many that people here would enjoy.
[Comment Deleted]
"Anti Ted" in what capacity? Is it an honest disagreement or is it just hating him for unsubstantiated reasons? If it is the former, then we have to accept there will be people who disagree with us on solid intellectual grounds. If we just shut out any criticism, then we will just become as closed-minded and indolent as the public that has been propagandized by the system.
Even if the archive is "Anti Ted" in an unsubstantiated way, I don't see any reason not to use it since there are many useful writings Kaczynski himself wrote that you won't find anywhere else (even on the anarchist library). It is not like you have to pay to use it anyways.
thetedkarchive, do you have a response to the critique against you and your project from Fitch & Madison, Último Reducto and others?
I don't see any claim that the writings on the archive are not accurate. So, we're supposed to ignore or 'denounce' them and ignore the writings because of some sort of moral position? Meh...
I would hope that anyone who calls themself 'anti-tech' is not a child who needs to be told what is acceptable to read and what is prohibited to read.
Is there anything on the website, which the website claims to be written by Kaczynski, that was not actually written by Kaczynksi? If so, then I would agree, that seems like a bad thing and I would avoid the website then. But the linked blog post doesn't seem to claim that (unless i've misread it).
If not, then it seems silly to suggest the website should be 'denounced' as 'the enemy'. If people are interested in reading what Kaczynski wrote, then why shouldn't they do that? Visiting a website is hardly going to have any material impact in the opposition to technology. I don't see any reasonable justification for not visiting the website other than 'the person who runs this website is bad, it is morally wrong to "support" them by visiting the website'. which just comes off like some kind of political nonsense to me, like leftists who say you shouldn't read Kaczynski because 'he's a fascist' or whatever.
Sure, we can recommend what people read. That's hardly the same as saying the website (not even the writings on it) are 'the enemy'. Who cares about advertising? like everyone doesn't already think Kaczynski is a terrible person?
My point is that we all have to develop our own understanding of how the world works and not buy into some sort of moralist ideology. Reading things we want to read (regardless of whether people recommend them or not) is a part of that. people should approach anti-tech/anti-civ positions with a full and considered understanding, not because they read a few things that were 'recommended' to read. And not because they avoided websites run by 'the enemy', which is some sort of weird moralist position.
To shitpost a bit, but also the basic point is valid: libraries are pro-tech, so we should never read anything from a library because we're giving free advertising to the enemy?
'The Sex Offenses and their Treatments'
This is just such a weird book that I had to share it.
Basically, this book is an attempt at marshaling psychology studies in the defense of Christian Fundamentalist beliefs. More specifically, the belief that evil is literally rooted in specific areas of the body, which can be cut off to become pure again.
Holy shit did you read the castration section?? WHAT IS GOING ON??
Been a while since I read the 1979 autobiography, but I can't remember mention of any special interest in porn. But he had fantasies and certainly did some.. weird stuff around the time the family moved to Evergreen Park. Fantasizing about being a girl(not that weird), he had oral sex with boys, and attempts at anal sex with boys. Inserting stuff up his ass.
No way May i get a proof please
Well he wrote it in his biography, so I assume most people here have read it, but anyway I guess the Ted Archive still has it
No way ted would do that i will check it...
thetedkarchive.com/special/index
It's right there on the main page!! 1979 Autobiography! Lol yeah keep going with the downvotes. Now I remember why I did my own research into Teds beliefs and life. He always wrote in his letters that he abhorred the "fans" who didn't understand what he really was about, and to this group even his autobiography is news(!?) Unbelievable.. It's not like he wrote that much about himself. God forbid you do some actual reading of his, not just watch Manhunt and thinking it's cool he blew stuff up
God it’s nice to find a way to contact Norman
@Ishkah thank you
I think you should know the Ted K archive is run by borderline leftists. We should ideally not contribute to or associate with it. Either way, thanks for the transcript.
Kaczynski didn’t like conservatives either, if you read technological slavery as well as the manifesto you’ll see he didn’t really like any political ideologies. He also said to put politics aside entirely otherwise a revolution won’t work
TedKArchive isnt just leftist, its explicitly anti-kaczynski
Eh I can understand why people wouldn’t like what he did. Some people are really opposed to violence etc
... Why do you reckon those [some] people are really opposed to violence? It's because they are oversocialized types.
Not necessarily. Even some oversocialized people can display very violent tendencies, it not really possible to attribute everything to a person’s level of socialisation. I do sometimes wonder how many people in this sub are actually environmentalists and how many just idolise the violence/hate leftism regardless of the overriding message. Even wild animals aren’t particularly violent outside of competition or hunting, it’s a waste of their energy and effort.
I think it is quite funny that Kaczynski asked for "homage to barcelona", and the librarian (maybe someone else?) corrected it on the letter.
I was a Jehovah’s Witness as a kid. We lived in Swan Lake Montana. We had to go in service (knocking on doors. Shoving the religion at people) on Saturday. I liked going to his house. He would talk for hours to the person who knocked on his door. I got to sit in the car and read a book. He was very strange.
Wow, any conversations you remember?
Not really. We had a man in the Kingdom Hall who was really smart. He went to college. Which was unheard of back then. They would get into discussions about evolution. Talk about science and a bunch of other things as a teenager I didn’t care about. I just saw him as a crazy old man with bad hair 😂
So it stands to reason that he is still working on pure mathematics from within in cell at a supermax prison...the man is a real-life movie super-villain..
A person gets bored and lonely in the woods working on mail bombs day in and day out. Nothing like a few hours of algebraic number theory to pass the time.
An interesting conspiracy theory in the true crime subedits a few years ago argued that Kaczynski might be responsible for a few unsolved murders of women at colleges where he attended, taught classes or were near his mother’s house. And the theory’s adherents decided that he sought the hermit life to stop himself. But after a few years, he turned unibomber.
It was interesting to contemplate, except back then, most major campuses had at least one unsolved murder of a female student in the 1960s and 70s. Any student of that time who went to a university for undergrad, then to grad school and moved on to teach at yet another campus would likely have landed in two or three places with an unsolved campus crime. No DNA or sophisticated forensics back then.
The man really was extremely intelligent.
The cheese still slid off his cracker. It can happen to the best and worst of us.
It makes you wonder how many of these people can be discovered and helped in time before its too late if we had... oh I dont know... UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE AND MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT.
I had a professor who knew him well during their undergrad days at Harvard. He told me Kaczynski was really good at playing billiards, and was a chill guy. Nothing to suggest he’d become the unabomber lol.
His perspective of intellectual tension with Piranian is interesting and I maybe sensed it reading their papers. Piranian and collaborators were in the complex analysis space, it seemed like they were developing language for talking about boundary functions from their work on cluster sets, and all of it seemed geared toward complex analysis applications. Ted's papers treated boundary functions like its own distinct discipline and I don't think he mentions cluster sets once. So it's funny that George seemed to urge him to prove this statement (a) about "functions admitting disjoint arcs", a concept originating from cluster sets, while Ted proved this statement (b) first which is primarily a boundary function concept.
Statement (b) that continuous half plane functions admit honorary Baire class 2 functions (functions differing from baire class 1 on at most a countable subset) shows up in his thesis and it seems like he proved a version of that fairly early in 1964 based on that letter
As far as statement (a) I was not too far in the weeds of cluster sets but tbh it sounds like something that should have been proved already. Wouldn't take my word for it over his though
Can't speak to whether or not his stuff would get published today... if my paper gets published then that would be in his favor. The things complex analysts were interested in during the mid 20th century are not so much in vogue anymore, in fact it seems like they fell out of style quite fast based on what I've seen in the literature. So most things Ted would have been working on post-Berkeley would have been non-trivial but also probably not discovered sooner by anyone due to a lack of interest. Not implying anything negative about his work, just that certain inquiries in math come and go
Honestly, I believe he is autistic and some of his traits for that come across as self-absorbed. My opinion after knowing him 20 years.
... I did research for Ted for his books and studies, along with a judge who was also assisting. He won’t allow any online research at all, only actual books and encyclopedias. Tedious work, but that’s how I came to know him.
The mirror... That implies that Ted looked at it, thought, "This is the look I'm going for," and went about his days.
Cool! Crossposted in the steganography sub
Remember when Ted Kaczynski said "I'm sorry women" for real?
If you can remember where you got the idea Ted visited a homophobic therapist I'd be super curious. I think likely you made a mistake, but I'd be curious how you perceive you made this mistake, as similar mistakes are made from the other direction by the far-right, imagining that Ted had gender confusion after lectures from liberal professors.
Ohhh! I've heard a few different tellings of the story that might have been apocryphal?
That he tried telling the therapist and they were unsupportive?
Anyway, Ted's version sounds legit
It really shouldn't be understated, Ted K in his active murderous phase would have derived extreme satisfaction and pleasure in killing everyone who posts here. He was a just a regular psychopath dirtbag who later on dressed up his psychopathy in anarcho primitivism to make it respectable.
"People I hate most are those who consciously and willfully promote the technological society, such as scientists, businessmen and politicians.
I emphasize that my motivation is personal revenge.
I don't pretend to have any kind of philosophical or moralistic justification.
The concept of morality is simply one of the psychological tools by which society controls people's behavior.
In May 1978, I came back to the Chicago area, mainly for one reason, so that I could more safely attempt to murder a scientist businessman.
Or the like.
I would also like to kill a Communist."
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-journal-of-early-crimes
It should be noted that it pains me to say this because as a collapsenik I like ship of fools and think he's probably right in the sense that everyone is divided and bickering over stupid idpol.
This is why it stings even more when you read his journals and realise he's just a murderous shithead who really just killed random innocent people for sheer pettiness more than anything.
This is a large online archive of information on Ted Kaczynski:
thetedkarchive.com/special/index
I had not before read his 1979 autobiographical sketch:
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-ted-kaczynski-s-1979-autobiography
In modern terminology, Ted was an incel, and sexual frustration played a big role in his life trajectory.
He was known for his misogyny and wouldn't reply to letters from women. I guess Emma above used a deadname or pseudonym, or maybe he just got lonely after all those years in supermax and started replying to anyone who would send him letters.
Willing to eat crow on this lol
"I've come to feel especially ashamed of my earlier attitudes toward women since getting to know the women on my legal team."
In 1995, when I worked at @sciam the Unabomber sent us a letter complaining about a story on how accelerator experiments might destroy the world.
I just found this text from Ted Kaczynski's journal in 1979 and thought it may be of interest to people here in partially explaining Ted's period of confusing self-identification as an anarchist:
An early attempt to argue for hunter-gatherer societies or human extermination
Had to stop early on, second paragraph; 'each adult male':
“Because a nomadic hunting-gathering society is more or less egalitarian and has very few members as compared to a modern society, each adult male can significantly participate in the important decisions, rather than having these decisions arbitrarily imposed by some vast system.”
An early attempt to argue for hunter-gatherer societies or human extermination
Like Ted, I often fantasize about being a word dictator, what would I have the masses do or not do...
And though I greatly value my personal freedoms, I realize it is our freedoms that have gotten us into the mess we're in; the freedom to have as many children as we want, the freedom to earn as much money as we want, the freedom to build or buy as big of a house as we want, the freedom to use as many resources as we please, etc. And unless our population crashes soon, an environmentally aware dictatorship is probably our best hope for the future of the earth.
Reading through some of this... the dude was a drama queen!
Kaczynski was one miserable alienated weirdo, so extreme in this that you could not make him up in any work of believable fiction.
It sounds juvenile to say that his ideas were stupid, but they were. And this speaks volumes about the ever more berserk character of a society that not only generates a poor fool like him, but, even more absurdly, generates his admirers.
Ted Kaczynski, his spectacle and its consequences have been a disaster for the anti-tech conversation.
I do like the idea of documenting the ideological jibberish of people who use "nature" as a justification for violence, because I have thought about doing the same thing. However, I'm a lot more curious about how real life could just be a little less alienating, and none of these people who you enshrine and document have any real solutions to that.
I think I emailed you (ishka) about getting information about ted kaczinsky's underlying psychology a few years ago, and you kindly sent me a link to the yahoo! archives of his letters. I think these are the most important take-aways from Ted Kaczinsky's life:
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He was praised how smart he was from a young age
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He borrowed a lot of luddite and anti-civilization ideas
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His life clearly got worse after he was sent to Harvard early and became part of a study, which was constructed to de-construct the ideas of the participants in a cold and dismissive way.
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As a result of his confusion, he enlisted his brother to help him build a cabin so he could get revenge
TK has consistently denies the Harvard studies had any effect on him, but I personally see this as character armor. See his anger about his legal team wanting to use the insanity defense...
I don't feel convinced that having a giant archive of his propaganda really enlightens any of us about "eco-fascism", but I definitely appreciate you turning your fascination into a project, and it's a shame that these online anarchist spaces are so fully dependent on social media like Reddit and Twitter. Don't get bogged down in trying to control the thoughts of the people who are on all these networks, it will certainly drive you mad. For that reason I do sympathize with people who want to their turn their frustration into a political program, or revolutionary scheme.
Now is as good a time as any to remind folks that Kaczynski was basically a black pilled white supremacist and not actually a green anarchist contrary to popular belief.
Folks can argue he was never explicitly racist but the subtext was heard loud and clear and continues to be to this day.
Here's a 2020 letter from prison in which kaczynski denounces racism solely because it's ineffective strategically to the advancement of his cause, calls for mixing distinct cultures out of existence, and says that ecofascists are left-wing socialists:
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-ecofascism-an-aberrant-branch-of-leftism
In this piece he argues that leftists fighting for social justice issues are actually enforcers for the system he wishes to see dismantled:
thetedkarchive.com/library/the-system-s-neatest-trick
Hear me out: what if people's civil rights are actually tangible things with material consequences for their lives and livelihoods and abandoning their defense to seek one's own liberation from the constraints of living in a society is selfish bullshit:
thetedkarchive.com/library/hit-where-it-hurts
The whole conception of anti-civilizationalism is anti-human and malthusian IMO. it's generally upper middle class white guys mad they have to deal with other people's shit and happy to see scores of people die in collapse if it means they can have their quiet cabin in the woods.
I want luxury gay space communism 🤷♂️
The word "basically" is doing some REAL heavy lifting here but yeah.
I'll take that.
In this letter, TK argues that anti-racism, etc. is a distraction from the goal of dismantling industrial society and that revolutionary groups should explicitly disavow "efforts to help women, homosexuals, or racial minorities" to alienate leftists:
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-letter-to-an-anonymous-german
Hm that sounds familiar...
Here's a blueprint for the developing red-brown alliance. I won't link to the source for this right now (I'm working on a long piece to provide proper context), but this is being promoted currently, and has ties to the RFK Jr network.
For the record, he only opposed industrial technology, not civilization.
Ted did oppose civilization and argued that it should be opposed post an anti-tech revolution. He just didn't see any easy way of preventing people from farming post a revolution. ...
--thetedkarchive.com/library/frequently-asked-questions-about-ted-kaczynski#toc22
I was wrong, thanks for the correction.
He's still evil though. Man didn't even have affection toward his parents who were good to him.
... we've decided to let him live, so let him be our living symbol of cowardice and evil. He gives us a chance to look cowardice and evil in the face, forces us to grasp what is almost ungraspable, that a man exists who has dedicated his life to creating misery, who prides himself on being in the same line of work as plague and cancer, creator of suffering, of widows and orphans and pain and death.
Looking at him reminds us that there is nothing easier than creating misery. There is no trick to it. Looking at him reminds us that nothing is easier than to injure or kill a man if you are cowardly enough to hide while you do it. He reminds us that killing is cheap and easy. It's no achievement to create orphans, no big deal to create widows. They are easily created.
I hope we always remember the men he murdered and the misery he caused and the happiness he took away. Evil will always exist, but we ought to take this occasion to reaffirm that we will never accept it. We will always fight it.
This is a powerful quote. I can't stand the people who defend him as if he was a martyr
When I finally read Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, he didn’t seem like a mad genius. His 1979 Autobiography, on the other hand, raises some red flags:
I am told that I had three bad experiences before I was old enough to remember. I pulled a pot of boiling water off the stove and was scalded very severely. I fell on my chin with my tongue between my teeth, so that my tongue was badly injured and needed a great deal of stitching-up. I had an undiagnosed allergy to eggs, which caused me to swell up enormously all over my body. I was hospitalized for, I think, a week, with the allergy.
Apparently I took the hospitalization very badly. I am told that my parents were not permitted to spend much time visiting me, that I was much tormented (inadvertently) by inquisitive doctors, and that I was made extremely frightened and miserable by all this. My parents say that by the time I came out of the hospital I had become completely inert and would neither smile, nor cry, nor respond to attention in any other way. I conjecture that this experience is responsible for my stubbornness and for my high resistance to physical and especially to psychological pain…
The Pázmány Foundation announces a tender for the preparation and submission of lecture-type prose manuscripts. The first three winners of the essay writing competition will receive a cash prize ...
Materials related to topic description ...
The work of Guardini quoted by the Holy Father (Letters from Lake Como) is available in German here: the VI. letter starts on page 52:
archive.org/details/briefevomcomerse0000roma/page/52/mode/2up?q=analysiert
The same is available in English here:
thetedkarchive.com/library/romano-guardini-letters-from-lake-como#toc14
The rare Unabomber documents being kept hidden by a few zealots and rich people
How do people still defend this guy?
Lucky bastard. My daughter's friends wrote a collective letter to Ted and he wrote back as well.
I posted it years ago. He scolded them for being too attached to their electronic devices. LoL.
Unabomber solution would be 8 billion people dead. Give this a read if you want to understand his case:
thetedkarchive.com/library/lis-wiehl-lisa-pulitzer-hunting-the-unabomber
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-ted-kaczynski-s-1979-autobiography
... When we first moved to Evergreen Park, there was a boy...who lived nearby. A couple of times this kid persuaded me to go out in the prairie and strip with him...in the end I did strip, and found it sexually exciting, as he did. ...
Seems like he was just too high IQ and weird to be able to connect with normal women. Unironically his best bet probably would've been keeping his Berkeley professor job and eventually seducing some 19-year-old college girl with daddy issues when he was in his 40s or 50s.
Also, I think his diatribes about leftism and social relations are much more important than what he had to say about technology. Trying to stop or retard the progress of technological advancement seems futile and pointless. Technology is what makes us human and separates us from animals and apes, our closest genetic relatives (though some of them do use very rudimentary tech now).
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-ted-kaczynski-s-1979-autobiography
...When we first moved to Evergreen Park, there was a boy...who lived nearby. A couple of times this kid persuaded me to go out in the prairie and strip with him...in the end I did strip, and found it sexually exciting, as he did. ...
The fact he was a degenerate just proves his point.
Analysis of Unabomber manifesto and his actions.
Link: thetedkarchive.com/library/analysis-of-ted-s-ideas-actions
For a quick reading, but there´s way more, here´s two:
thetedkarchive.com/library/chad-a-haag-the-philosophy-of-ted-kaczynski
thetedkarchive.com/library/sean-fleming-the-unabomber-and-the-origins-of-anti-tech-radicalism
The crazy part about 40 years old virgin... it´s real:
thetedkarchive.com/library/lis-wiehl-lisa-pulitzer-hunting-the-unabomber
thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-1988-autobiography ...
thetedkarchive.com/library/lis-wiehl-lisa-pulitzer-hunting-the-unabomber#toc16
Ted isn't even that interesting. His ideas were ripped off completely from Jacques Ellul, and Ellul is far more interesting to read than Ted.
Everything you'd need to decrypt some of the Unabomber's never before publicly decrypted journals
I feel like clicking these will immediately put me on at least one list but I’m still gonna do it anyway.
TIL Ted Kaczynski carried on working on pure mathematics from his cabin in Montana and he even submitted a type-written paper to a math journal in 1976 which he claimed proved an earlier posited solution
thetedkarchive.com/library/frequently-asked-questions-about-ted-kaczynski#toc23
Kind of sad, dude had all that freedom. Living in the woods, enjoying nature and was stupid enough to end up in prison for the rest of his life. He traded it all to push his political ideas in the worst way.
Dude was basically an angry redditor born too soon. If Reddit had been around back then it probably would saved some lives by giving him a place to rant about virtue signalling and women.
Interesting. I'm saving the link to dive into later.