So, in light of ESR warning he'll shoot "Antifa Communist [rioters]" like the wolves they are, esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8708 some anecdotal advice with suggestions on combat strategies when going mano a mano with Eric S Raymond.
Back in the early 2000s, I wrote a piece noting Raymond's increasing Eric-centric management of the Jargon File: which prompted him, when we finally met, to get into a verbal confrontation with me over what he angrily told me was "character assassination" ntk.net/2003/06/06/?l=…
What's sort of funny about Eric is that, in my experience, in real life he is initially as assertive as his writing, and then *completely thrown* by normal reality. Like, he'll go on a rant at you, and then you'll point out some blatantly obvious problem with his argument...
and he'll look at you like *no-one* has ever said this to him before, and go "oh, huh, I hadn't considered that." It's sort of endearing, though I don't know how that would play out in a firefight on the wartorn streets of Philadelphia.
His biggest reality challenge when arguing with me back then is that I was lugging my one-year-old baby daughter in a baby-sling in front of me, and every time he'd make some aggressive high-status move, Ada would gurgle in his face, and try to grab his nose.
It also didn't help when, at the point where we should have been at our most manly and wrassling-ish, a young woman hacker entered the fray, bonded with Ada, and me and her paused the battle to discuss just how cute and clever Ada was, and do a jiggly dance to cheer her up
Eric was obviously clumsily gear-changing into trying to impress the woman, but it was really unclear how that to finesse that where the woman seemed more interested at that point in rocking out with Ada than see the noted neopagan anti-islamofascist thinker take me out.
(Eric was notorious at cons at the time for constantly hitting on women, as well as doing these weird martial art demos that consisted of getting crowds to watch him make large boys fall over with martial arts.)
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying here is that Eric is indeed probably armed, dangerous, and confused enough to think he's going to go out and shoot rioters when he visits the Philadelphia Costco, and maybe someone will get hurt and he'll go to prison.
But I suspect that, as in almost every other case of his bravado in the past, he'll do nothing of the sort -- not because he's not smart, nor a good shot, nor a libertarian too naive and parochial to spot when they've slipped into two decades of cheerleading state violence
... but because every time he wanders off his IBM Model M keyboard into the real world, reality's real-time complexity kicks over his house of card rationalisations, and he ends up like the bemused smart kid in the corner of a party struck dumb by the simplest acts of humanity
Also, I'm sure that *just* at the moment that he settles into a natural point of aim in preparation for taking out an Antifa mastermind with a single shot, *that's* just when the Iranian assassins who've been tracking him for 14 years will finally strike. esr.ibiblio.org/?p=290
(Also, and this is kind of cheap shot I know, but it's my dominant memory of the whole weird event and it feels odd not to mention it here -- Eric's breath *really* smells.
Guess all it's those years studying the blade instead of brushing the teeth.)
Guess all it's those years studying the blade instead of brushing the teeth.)
