Its a common truism to say "Furries keep the internet going" and "if the plane to Anthrocon went down then the internet would collapse" and its not quite as true as it used to be.

But it IS true in the case of a big blue monoceros named Tugrik. He passed away very recently, after a long struggle with illness and poor health. You might not know his name, but all of furrydom owes him a debt. Quietly, behind the scenes, he was instrumental in the modern fandom's origins.

Tugrik was one of those furs who kept the Internet going. He was FurryMUCK's hardware admin back in the day, and was one of the smartest furs I ever met. In a fandom that has a lot of technical experts in it, Tugrik was on another level. His knowledge of computer networking, his ability to build and invent, was absolutely genius-level. The guy built a mobile wifi hotspot before anyone else, ffs. He built an FPV drone from scratch - a decade before they existed. He came up with a kind of GPS antenna that revolutionized all kinds of navigation. If he had wanted to he could have easily been a billionaire. He was not interested in that, although he did make a good living. He built stuff because it was fun and because he wanted to experiment and play around. He was a true geek, a real maker. He raised chickens and grew his own hot peppers. He learned stuff and messed around with that stuff for his whole life, and I can't imagine a better way to live.

And he was a brilliant cook, and a good friend, and generous almost to a fault, and just all around a warm, friendly person that I will miss greatly. We lost a good one. Goodbye, Tug.