It's kind of hilarious to call 2 single words at the end of a blogpost that you could have read over "pushing politics down your throat". As you said, you didn't even have an idea what it meant. For all you knew before you looked it up, he was complaining about the frigid winter weather.
No, the point is valid. The reason milch is saying "it's only two words what's your problem" isn't because it's only two words, it's because they are expressing a message he finds to be acceptable. The parent poster was attempting to point that out by showing there are "two words" messages he wouldn't support.
Advocating for the removal of an abusive government agency that has been around for only a handful of years is very fucking different from professing white supremacist views.
Trying to compare those because "they're only two words!" is textbook false equivalence.
The poster I replied to made an over exaggerated statement about the prominence of these two words, which I found hilarious, in the same way a teenager saying "I am LITERALLY DYING right now" after the barista spelled their name wrong on their coffee order would be hilarious. This was a very slight inconvenience to the poster's day (at best) that they could have dropped after deciding they don't care about events happening in a country they don't live in.
Programmers are curious by nature. So it's not 2 words; it's 2 words + wikipedia article + news articles about it, just to know what he's writing about. All uncalled for.
Be a little more curious then, friend. The author lives in Portland, which has been experiencing federal brutalization for months. Same place where the feds are repeatedly violating standards for warfare by using chemical munitions on civilians and engaging in large-scale misinformation campaigns against immigrants.
It’s almost astonishing how you found his statement “uncalled for”, while neglecting these facts.
Objecting to murder is still politics, no? In fact, US republicans and democrats can't seem to agree who is fine to murder.
Republicans say that abortions are murder, but often also that prisoner executions are fine. Democrats tend to be in favor of abortions, but not of the death penalty.
I'm not making a moral judgement here, but I do want to ask. Is it just politics you don't agree with that you don't want Andrew to express?
Objecting to murder qua murder isn't political, since murder is defined as unjustified premeditated killing. The key word being _unjustified_: it's hardly political to oppose something that is unjustified by definition. The political aspect comes into play when people start to debate which killings are and aren't justified.
Your abortion example is a good one, so I will use it to clarify my point. When people say “abortion is murder!” they aren't just objecting to murder. They are asserting that abortion _is_ murder, actually: it's the political view that killing unborn foetuses is unjustified. The essential claim isn't “murder is bad”, but rather “abortion is bad”. So summarizing opposition to abortion as simply opposition to murder isn't accurate at all. It doesn't cut at the core of the objection.
The same situation exists with ICE. Modern societies grant the state a monopoly on violence, which the state delegates to officers who enforce the law of the land. When those officers use violence, it can be justified by virtue of them enforcing the monopoly on violence on behalf of the state, for the greater good. When a police officer shoots a gunman who attempts to kill civilians, few people would call that murder: after all, the killing is justified. Sometimes, law enforcement officers kill people when it's questionable whether it is justified. Labeling the killing as “murder” or “not murder” is then a political position: you aren't making a specific statement about murder (again, almost everyone agrees that murder is bad), but you're insisting that killing a person in such-or-such a situation is (not) justified.
So yes, insisting that the recent ICE killings of left wing activists constitute murder is a political statement: it's asserting that this ostensibly justified use of state violence was not justified in this case. Which is a point you can plausibly make, but you cannot insist it's not political, because determining which types of killings are justified and which are not is intrinsically a matter of publicy policy, i.e., political.
> Is it just politics you don't agree with that you don't want Andrew to express?
Ideally, I would not want Andrew to express any political views, at least not in his capacity of Zig project leader. I prefer open source projects that are maximally inclusive, which means not enforcing contributors to conform with particular political views.
Of course there is no law that says open source projects must be inclusive of political views, so you can create an open source project just for people who have the same political views as you do, but then I think the decent thing to do is at least be honest about it.
If Andrew thinks Zig is an American Democratic software project, he should clearly label it as such on ziglang.org. And then I also think Hacker News should ban him when he makes posts where he takes political stances, since Hacker News explicitly has a policy that opposes politics. If Andrew doesn't think Zig is just for American Democrats, he should refrain from making political posts on the Zig language blog. He can still go to his anti-ICE rally and post about it on his personal Bluesky account or whatever, but that at least makes it clear those are his personal political views, and they are not part of the Zig project.
Of course, I cannot enforce either of those things. They are just my personal preferences.
Denouncing ICE is not denouncing federal immigration law. The Department of Homeland Security did not exist until 2003. Are you saying that prior to 2003, the US did not enforce federal immigration law?
What's your point? Immigration law existed before 2003 too. It might not have been the DHS or ICE enforcing it, but the concept of illegal aliens wasn't invented in 2003.
And yes, I interpret “Abolish ICE” to mean “don't enforce federal immigration law”, because that's what people _usually_ mean when they say “abolish ICE”.
Technically, “abolish ICE” could also mean: “abolish ICE and replace it with an even more ruthless state secret police modeled after the East German Stasi” but in my experience that's _rarely_ what people who say “abolish ICE” mean. So I don't think you can fault me for assuming, in good faith, that's not what Andrew means when he calls for the abolition for ICE, either.
If Andrew feels I'm misconstruing his intent, then he's welcome to write a full blog post explaining his nuanced views on immigration, but he didn't do that. He only wrote two words: abolish. ICE. I think it's reasonable to assume that he means to literally abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leaving the US without Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Andrew doesn't need to write anything. You're making a bad faith argument.
> I think it's reasonable to assume that he means to literally abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leaving the US without Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
You really don't think that the US had federal immigration enforcement before 2003. Very strange.
So you're basing it all on your willful interpretation of "don't enforce federal immigration law" instead of going with any other interpretation that would not enrage you so? That seems unhealthy.
How about the following very likely interpretation: "abolish the government agency ICE through democratic process (including protesting and voting)" followed with one of "move immigration law enforcement to another agency and better qualified agents with different, more humane rules" or "also reform immigration law to be more humane than allowing the executive arbitrary deportation of people in a legal process of gaining legal visa/citizenship/etc"
or any of the other less ridiculous takes than your interpretation or Stasi comparison.
It's kind of hilarious to call 2 single words at the end of a blogpost that you could have read over "pushing politics down your throat". As you said, you didn't even have an idea what it meant. For all you knew before you looked it up, he was complaining about the frigid winter weather.
I like ZSF and what it stands for.
I don’t like “American” only politics in it. Thats it. In fact I would like zero politics in it. (from anywhere in the world)
Bash the mediocrity in software that we have produced over the years. Slow. Electronbased. Etc.
I can have both the opinions.
Also I will support Andrew Kelley on Mastodon if he says the same.
Separation of Concerns.
Would you really make the same argument if those two words were “White power!” or something?
Hey it’s only the first week of February - isn’t it a bit early to be vying for most egregious example of a false equivalence?
No, the point is valid. The reason milch is saying "it's only two words what's your problem" isn't because it's only two words, it's because they are expressing a message he finds to be acceptable. The parent poster was attempting to point that out by showing there are "two words" messages he wouldn't support.
Advocating for the removal of an abusive government agency that has been around for only a handful of years is very fucking different from professing white supremacist views.
Trying to compare those because "they're only two words!" is textbook false equivalence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence#Examples
The poster I replied to made an over exaggerated statement about the prominence of these two words, which I found hilarious, in the same way a teenager saying "I am LITERALLY DYING right now" after the barista spelled their name wrong on their coffee order would be hilarious. This was a very slight inconvenience to the poster's day (at best) that they could have dropped after deciding they don't care about events happening in a country they don't live in.
Programmers are curious by nature. So it's not 2 words; it's 2 words + wikipedia article + news articles about it, just to know what he's writing about. All uncalled for.
Be a little more curious then, friend. The author lives in Portland, which has been experiencing federal brutalization for months. Same place where the feds are repeatedly violating standards for warfare by using chemical munitions on civilians and engaging in large-scale misinformation campaigns against immigrants.
It’s almost astonishing how you found his statement “uncalled for”, while neglecting these facts.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/portland-ven...
To be honest, I am more concerned about the Iranian government killing its own people.
Iran has already killed half as many people as the estimated casualties in the Israel-Palestine war.
Not everything revolves around USA.
I’m distraught by what’s happening there, too. Truly horrifying details emerged in the last week or so.
We must all not be discouraged from speaking truth to power, especially when power is abused - irrespective of country or creed!
ICE must be abolished. The people of Iran must have democracy. But only one of those things is within the author’s relative sphere of influence.
The gall to tell someone what to create or not create, or say or not say with their own creation, for free for your own enjoyment.
[flagged]
“Woke”: objecting to murder
[flagged]
Objecting to murder is still politics, no? In fact, US republicans and democrats can't seem to agree who is fine to murder.
Republicans say that abortions are murder, but often also that prisoner executions are fine. Democrats tend to be in favor of abortions, but not of the death penalty.
I'm not making a moral judgement here, but I do want to ask. Is it just politics you don't agree with that you don't want Andrew to express?
Objecting to murder qua murder isn't political, since murder is defined as unjustified premeditated killing. The key word being _unjustified_: it's hardly political to oppose something that is unjustified by definition. The political aspect comes into play when people start to debate which killings are and aren't justified.
Your abortion example is a good one, so I will use it to clarify my point. When people say “abortion is murder!” they aren't just objecting to murder. They are asserting that abortion _is_ murder, actually: it's the political view that killing unborn foetuses is unjustified. The essential claim isn't “murder is bad”, but rather “abortion is bad”. So summarizing opposition to abortion as simply opposition to murder isn't accurate at all. It doesn't cut at the core of the objection.
The same situation exists with ICE. Modern societies grant the state a monopoly on violence, which the state delegates to officers who enforce the law of the land. When those officers use violence, it can be justified by virtue of them enforcing the monopoly on violence on behalf of the state, for the greater good. When a police officer shoots a gunman who attempts to kill civilians, few people would call that murder: after all, the killing is justified. Sometimes, law enforcement officers kill people when it's questionable whether it is justified. Labeling the killing as “murder” or “not murder” is then a political position: you aren't making a specific statement about murder (again, almost everyone agrees that murder is bad), but you're insisting that killing a person in such-or-such a situation is (not) justified.
So yes, insisting that the recent ICE killings of left wing activists constitute murder is a political statement: it's asserting that this ostensibly justified use of state violence was not justified in this case. Which is a point you can plausibly make, but you cannot insist it's not political, because determining which types of killings are justified and which are not is intrinsically a matter of publicy policy, i.e., political.
> Is it just politics you don't agree with that you don't want Andrew to express?
Ideally, I would not want Andrew to express any political views, at least not in his capacity of Zig project leader. I prefer open source projects that are maximally inclusive, which means not enforcing contributors to conform with particular political views.
Of course there is no law that says open source projects must be inclusive of political views, so you can create an open source project just for people who have the same political views as you do, but then I think the decent thing to do is at least be honest about it.
If Andrew thinks Zig is an American Democratic software project, he should clearly label it as such on ziglang.org. And then I also think Hacker News should ban him when he makes posts where he takes political stances, since Hacker News explicitly has a policy that opposes politics. If Andrew doesn't think Zig is just for American Democrats, he should refrain from making political posts on the Zig language blog. He can still go to his anti-ICE rally and post about it on his personal Bluesky account or whatever, but that at least makes it clear those are his personal political views, and they are not part of the Zig project.
Of course, I cannot enforce either of those things. They are just my personal preferences.
Denouncing ICE is not denouncing federal immigration law. The Department of Homeland Security did not exist until 2003. Are you saying that prior to 2003, the US did not enforce federal immigration law?
What's your point? Immigration law existed before 2003 too. It might not have been the DHS or ICE enforcing it, but the concept of illegal aliens wasn't invented in 2003.
And yes, I interpret “Abolish ICE” to mean “don't enforce federal immigration law”, because that's what people _usually_ mean when they say “abolish ICE”.
Technically, “abolish ICE” could also mean: “abolish ICE and replace it with an even more ruthless state secret police modeled after the East German Stasi” but in my experience that's _rarely_ what people who say “abolish ICE” mean. So I don't think you can fault me for assuming, in good faith, that's not what Andrew means when he calls for the abolition for ICE, either.
If Andrew feels I'm misconstruing his intent, then he's welcome to write a full blog post explaining his nuanced views on immigration, but he didn't do that. He only wrote two words: abolish. ICE. I think it's reasonable to assume that he means to literally abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leaving the US without Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Andrew doesn't need to write anything. You're making a bad faith argument.
> I think it's reasonable to assume that he means to literally abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leaving the US without Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
You really don't think that the US had federal immigration enforcement before 2003. Very strange.
So you're basing it all on your willful interpretation of "don't enforce federal immigration law" instead of going with any other interpretation that would not enrage you so? That seems unhealthy. How about the following very likely interpretation: "abolish the government agency ICE through democratic process (including protesting and voting)" followed with one of "move immigration law enforcement to another agency and better qualified agents with different, more humane rules" or "also reform immigration law to be more humane than allowing the executive arbitrary deportation of people in a legal process of gaining legal visa/citizenship/etc" or any of the other less ridiculous takes than your interpretation or Stasi comparison.
“Pushing politics is explicitly against the Hacker News guidelines though.”
Cool tirade.
"Be kind. Don't be snarky."
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
"Danger hair"? WTAF are you even talking about? Are you afraid of dyed hair?
[flagged]
Ah, so you are signalling misogyny and judging people as less just by their choice of hair-do with that term, got it.
[flagged]