RMS Lifestyle | Hacker News Reader

RMS Lifestyle

stallman.org

42 pointsvlugorilla22 comments

He sounds like a thoughtful and kind person. Absolutely fascinating.

RMS is certainly something

https://youtu.be/I25UeVXrEHQ?si=qEsgzhTby0Iz8cxl

I want to hear this jazz folk fusion Bulgarian wedding music now. He could have at least included a link or two :/

I doubt RMS would use any platform he could link to online. He likely listens to public domain music, copyleft music, or perhaps he pirates it.

I can't stand his use of "c...rap" to describe rap/hip-hop. This is like the "Micro$oft" of musical genre hatred (and frankly comes across as slightly, um, racist? given his embrace of like every other genre in the world besides "harsh" rock/metal).

he's not like us

https://stallman-report.org/on-sex-with-minors/

Oh my. Now I wonder if Stallman is in the Epstein files. (Release the Epstein files!)

He was making a valid philosophical point in order to defend the legacy of his late best friend and mentor who did not get a chance to defend himself and got caught up in the Epstein drama. It's human and understandable and the political equivalent of offing yourself. Stallman never much cared for other peoples opinions or (office) politics. While the secrecy surrounding the Epstein files makes it impossible to know what (if anything) Minsky knew about Epsteins conduct or whether he participated in any of the criminal acts surrounding Epstein there have never been any allegations against Stallman and personally I do not think he has any actual interest in sexual reproduction and would not waste his time interacting with people that do not actively work in GNU / Free Software.

>personally I do not think he has any actual interest in sexual reproduction and would not waste his time interacting with people that do not actively work in GNU / Free Software

I'm getting my one lick in because I know litigating this will be futile, people will defend RMS to the bitter end regardless of what he says or does, and I'll probably just be flagged for my trouble.

RMS blogged many times over many years about his beliefs that child pornography and pedophilia should be legal and socially acceptable. He also has a history of creepy behavior around women. He clearly is not asexual.

If RMS wasn't a part of Epstein's shit, it's only because he wasn't sociable enough to fit in with that crowd, not because he wouldn't be into it.

Reading through those quotes, I get the impression that Stallman doesn't understand why underaged people can't give consent to people considered adults by the legal system. It falls in line with his other misunderstandings or lack of awareness on social issues.

He's right that young people have agency and can make informed decisions about themselves, but fails to recognize the social pressures that means that young people often aren't in a position to say no, or even understand that they can can say no. There are financial, social, and even legal power imbalances between minors and non-minors that make it impossible to assert that certain interactions are consentual, even if they aren't of a sexual nature. It's these power imbalances that are the issue, not whether or not a young person has enough factually to understand what they are consenting to. Interactions like this are abuses of the power that adults have over children, and that's a big part of what makes them so disturbing.

This can also apply to persons above the legal age.

If you think that’s just about defending a friend, than I think you haven’t read enough of the quotes on that page.

> The injustice [done to Minsky] is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X. (…)

> The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.

> We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

> I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.

This seems a very reasonable thing to say. Also useful concept "accusation inflation" thanks for linking.

> "sex with someone under 18 is rape”, “sex with a prostitute under 18 is enslavement”, and “making a nude photo of someone under 18 is a sexual assault.”

What is happening here is law being repurposed. Rape already has big sentences, and we want to give under 18s extra protections, so let's redefine what the word rape means so we can reuse the rape law.

> Efforts against the business of making and distributing images of that are justified — but these must not be done by dangerous methods.

Dangerous methods meaning redefining words.

A lot of things about Stallman are unusual. Creating a C compiler, library, editor, and from that a software movement is unusual. He is clearly neurodivergent; doesn't / can't anticipate how people will react to his opinions on socially fraught topics. History shows he is usually right, but doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut. I think the world is a better place for that, but it's come at his expense.

The author of that report, Drew DeVault, is also neurodivergent. Like Stallman he becomes fixated on topics, to the point of obsession. As a case in point, he obviously spends an inordinate amount of time stalking Stallman. It must of taken he years to gather all those references in the report you linked to.

Sadly DeVault's neurodivergence hasn't driven him to create a movement that binds people together, to create something bigger than of those people any could do alone that benefits everyone in the way Stallman has. Instead it drives he to attack others, and tear down what they have created.

Neurodivergent's make fairly easy targets, so I guess it's easy to understand why DeVault targets someone like Stallman and the movement he created instead of someone like Trump. Still, watching one neurodivergent tear into another in the way DeVault is fond of doing makes me very uncomfortable.

The rap/country part does sound less iconoclastic and more like a common attitude about music from the 1990s frozen in place since then.

I'd give him the benefit of the doubt that there's no racism behind it. But I struggle to see how wearing t-shirts lacks dignity while calling it "c..rap" music doesn't.

I actually agree with his conclusion. In my experience, rap is the only(?) genre of "music" that for the most part lacks a melodic structure. It (in my experience) is mostly rhythmic, which IMO is not very pleasant to listen to, because there isn't much to listen to. So while maybe I wouldn't refer to it as c...rap all the time, I think the phrase mostly expresses my feelings about the genre as a whole.

I feel like the people who say this simply haven’t listened to much of it, because there’s melody all over rap and hip-hop music, especially more contemporary rap.

OK, I'll out myself: I haven't listened to much rap. On the other hand, this is because of the impression I've gotten from the rap that I have heard. I'm open to trying some more melodic and musically interesting rap pieces, especially because the rhyming system of rap sounds interesting. Do you have any to recommend?

Hip hop can include elements of any other genre, so if you shared what kind of music you do like, it might be easier for others to direct you to hip hop you might also like.

I'm quite partial to instrumental hip hop personally; for example, "Jet Son" by Blockhead is nearly absent of lyrics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wo5jHw56Kg . "Here's What's Left" by RJD2 on the other hand is lyrical, but the lyrics aren't really rap, and the production overshadows it in my opinion (I initially heard it as an "instrumental"/vocal-less track which I can no longer find online) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECvbG7ioz-k

I don't listen to much hip hop with lyrics lately, but pretty much any type of music can be rapped over. For example, "Stan" by Eminem uses Dido's "Thank you" which might otherwise be classifed as electropop or trip-hop - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sixjHud8lYw

Try the album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert by Little Simz, it's one of my favorite records of all time. It's doing a ton of interesting things musically, plus Simz is an incredible rapper.

The ethos of rap music isn’t like the others. It’s not about musicality. I don’t know who it appeals to, but like RMS, I find it repulsive.

I always got the feeling with rap and hip hop that it's more about the style and how cool you are than it is about the music.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com