David Rakoff’s defense of pessimism
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The half-empty people lost a good one today.
David Rakoff has died. There wasn't much about him that wasn't funny, even the timing of the tumor that eventually killed him, which was discovered while he was writing a book defending pessimism and melancholoy, which made him my kind of guy.
"You can be the worst bastard on the ward and you will not die at a greater rate than the other people. People will simply be gladder when you do," he told Jon Stewart a couple of years ago.
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