4 ms·
Does he have a reputation for poor hygiene?
by bitmadness 3y ago
Does he have a reputation for poor hygiene?
- camoleon 3y agoI think that might be referring to an incident where he picked at his foot then ate the pickings.
- scaredginger 3y agohttps://youtu.be/I25UeVXrEHQ https://youtu.be/I25UeVXrEHQ
- op00to 3y agoYears and years ago he talked at my university lug. I picked him up in my car from the train. The BO smell remained in my car for WEEKS. Dude had a serious aroma.
- shafyy 3y agoClassic Seinfeld
- op00to 3y agostallman and jon voight both well known assholes!
- systemtest 3y agoA lot of people would pay good money to have their car smell like Stallman for weeks.
- solarman5000 3y agoI'm one of them. I want my children to meet him so badly. This news about his health is heart breaking
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sokoloff 3y agoOn the other side, back in college to earn extra money, I was his typist for around 10 hours (3 or so hours at a stint), meaning he sat diagonally behind me, reading the screen I was typing on. The only thing I noticed was his hair was a little wild. That was a few decades ago, so perhaps things have changed, but he was well within normal odor back in the early 90s.
- pcl 3y agoWhat were you typing for him?
- sokoloff 3y agoEverything. He would sit behind me and dictate keystrokes (mostly driving emacs, of course) to do email, edit code, and generally operate the computer. I don't want to talk about someone else's medical situation, but I think it's well-enough-known that rms had a period of RSI so severe that he was barred from using a keyboard to let his wrists/hands recover. A few hours in a row of hearing and typing C-Space C-u 2 4 M-w C-x C-b <RET> C-y C-x C-s is exhausting. It was also amusing (in retrospect) to get a polite-enough admonishment to "don't think about what the keystrokes are doing; please just type what I say" when he could tell that I was slowing down because I was paying too much attention to what the intent behind the keystrokes was.
- pcl 3y agoWow that must have been fascinating. Did you end up learning a ton of emacs-fu along the way, or did it sorta start to just flow through you? If I were in either of your shoes (sandals?) in that situation, I’m sure I would be super frustrated all the time. Impressive on both your parts.
- sokoloff 3y agoI learned a lot, but I wish I could have gutted it out for longer in order to learn more about emacs and gcc internals. (I knew "we" were doing some maintenance on gcc because I remember asking questions about a comment that said "this is a win" and asking rms if we were working on gnu chess and him telling me that it was a compiler optimization. [Yeah, that's how amazingly skilled I was at the time.]) I ended up doing 4 sessions totaling about 10 hours and when I told him I was quitting, I was apologetic that I felt like I'd wasted his time quitting so soon after starting. His response I can remember to this day and it was something like "Don't worry about it; most people quit after the first session. You helped me out and we'll make sure you get your check."
- kriberg 3y agoMore anectodal evidence: I've eaten pizza with him twice. Didn't notice anything.
- toasteros 3y agoAlso anectdotal: Ate at a Chinese restaurant with him, he's not gross at the table. I did hug him later and he was very sweaty - but we did just traipse across London in a bit of a rush and he was absolutely exhausted.
- peoplefromibiza 3y agomore like people like to exaggerate anecdotes for karma points
- xk_id 3y agoFWIW, there is a rare medical condition some people have, where their body odour is abnormally high. I knew a girl in high school, very attractive and a wonderful person, but she sufferred from this condition, despite her best efforts to manage it. She would be regularly bullied by the girls and rejected by the boys for it.
- red-iron-pine 3y agostallman doesn't have some highly rare medical condition, he's just a lazy hippy programmer type. and it sounds like he's got reasonably decent hygiene.
- ryder9 3y ago[dead]