Why do you dislike "threat model", it's a necessity. There can be no productive security discussion without a model present to frame and ground it in actuality.

Why do you dislike "threat model", it's a necessity. There can be no productive security discussion without a model present to frame and ground it in actuality. Given a determined, resourceful adversary, you're toast regardless of what you do to protect yourself. It makes sense therefore to have a realistic model and prepare accordingly. The probability that "100 channels full of randos" are going to use any of the -aspecific, hand-wavy- vectors you mentioned to defeat my security posture (which includes an IRC client written in a memory-safe language whose code I've reviewed that is masquerading through CTCP version as something else entirely) is miniscule. I can live with that but I've also spent some time to configure Emacs according to guidelines I previously mentioned and review code that I'm using and exposing to potential attacks.