Comment by AndyKelley
9 hours ago
The very same day I sat at home writing this devlog like a coward, less than five miles away, armed forces who are in my city against the will of our elected officials shot tear gas, unprovoked, at peaceful protestors, including my wife.
https://www.kptv.com/2026/01/31/live-labor-unions-rally-marc...
This isn't some hypothetical political agenda I'm using my platform to push. There's a nonzero chance I go out there next weekend to peacefully protest, and get shot like Alex Pretti.
Needless to say, if I get shot by ICE, it's not good for the Zig project. And they've brought the battle to my doorstep, almost literally.
Abolish ICE.
Please stay safe.
I can't hold it so had to create an account to share, I'm sorry. I'm one of the minor zig contributors, and I'm reading ziglang blog for the purpose of engagement in software engineering craft. I don't want to see these ICE stuff or whatever else political opinion you or somebody else have. I'm not from US and I barely know what ICE is but you're hating on people (I'm sure you think it's deserved, as with any hate) and I assume you may hate me at some point because I do something you don't share or like (like this comment for example). Thinking that creator of Zig may hate me, takes a lot of fun from using the language let alone contributing to it or areas surrounding it. What if tomorrow people with tattoos at particular spot will be hated in media and you'll be posting "Abolish people with tattoo". Not the best comparison, but I hope you got why I feel scared of engaging with community now.
I think you have big responsibility for maintaining community of people with different political opinions and you are definitely free to share it on your personal blog. But you chose to do it in the community driven project as a lead of that project. And it's not first time. It's a bit different. For me at least.
Also the fear is what made me create this new account, I'm not a bot or something like that. I'm just afraid due to many (political) reasons and I want to find peace in playing with computers and one of these safe places was just taken from me, which you probably have the right to do but you could've avoided it. You're not the only one. There are many projects like this who mention Gaza, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, all these stuff. It's getting less and less projects to engage with (again, for me, I think it works well for those projects as they attract people they like).
I'm sorry you have to suffer and see people deaths. Me too. I understand it's difficult to hold these stuff inside. As you can see I couldn't ether. But I hoped you're stronger than me.
Get some empathy and awareness. I’m not from the US either but I am against fascist thugs occupying cities. It’s not difficult.
Andy stay safe. We gotta all come to realization that none of this is possible if we let our democracy slip away. Millions before us died to preserve it. We owe it to them to put up a good fight.
My 85 year old mom lives in Portland and she attends rallies frequently. If you know of any way to support you or other local people doing this work, I'm very interested. My email is on my profile page.
I have a friend who is in Minneapolis. He's involved in caravans which are tracking ICE. He wasn't the driver in the last one. But, the ICE vehicle they tailed suddenly started going in a very direct path, instead of randomly driving. The driver figured it out first. They drove to the driver's house and then stood outside of their car for ten minutes staring at his house. Cars in Minnesota have their license plates on both the front and the back.
Is there any justification for that kind of intimidation? Did any of the Trump supporters vote for that? I hear about paid agitators on the left but not that kind of compensated actors. Is his name in a database now once they did the lookup?
Just go home. Work on Zig. Don't do anything stupid.
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The Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003. We didn't need it then and we don't need it now.
Why waste tax dollars on ineffective, privacy-violating security theater when we could spend it on education and health?
You didn't answer or even address a single question I asked. I'll ask again:
1. Are you OK with sovereign states enforcing their borders and deporting illegal immigrants?
2. Is it the awful tactics ICE uses to accomplish its mission, or do you find the mission in and of itself immoral?
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Are you ok with the size of the budget these agencies control? Are you ok with it being headed by a guy who never has denied he took a $50k bribe from the FBI and wasn't even the initial target of an investigation?
I would bet you $1000 that not one of the immigrants being rounded up were even accused of that kind of corruption and crimes.
How is this not bald corruption and an insane way to spend tax dollars when people are really struggling in this country?
And I know plenty of restaurant owners in Portland that are closing because of down tourism. Why can Trump sue the IRS for $10B but Portland can't sue him for disparaging the city because he can't figure out that videos of riots are five years old?
The budget needs to increase because there are a lot of people in the country illegally and in order to get every single one of them out the agency needs to scale up. When people start obstructing officers and being violent that increases the required number of officers even more.
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No. Both.
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These few-minutes-old accounts swooping in on hot button issues to try persuade people are such a goddamn scourge, I wish there were something that could be done about it.
In the end I probably just need to leave HN for a while because it's really doing a number on what's left of my ability to trust what I read online.
Only thing you can do is flag them. Two strikes and they're gone. Plus usually, moderation give these accounts a perma-ban.
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> I wish there were something that could be done about it.
I find it helpful to think of HN like one would any other social media site. There are things they could be doing to curtail these sorts of accounts. They have apparently chosen not to.
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When people like you finally realize what is happening in this country, I'm ready to quickly forgive and move on so that we can work together to preserve what freedoms we have left.
but please hurry... we really need you to pay attention and understand the reality that is upon us.
I do know what's happening. I've been around and watching for over a decade. We are bleeding from every orifice from an economic standpoint. The recent moves for deportations is an attempt by the office of the President to save face while not doing anything to fix over-spending, it's also a good vehicle for a surveillance push, and the RNC/old-school dems will be happy so someone like JD can take power afterwards to prop up the current rising oligarchy and further support British assets moving into the middle-east for "oil".
I'm not ignorant. I just know you aren't going to change anything by getting riled up emotionally and using language that indicates instability (I don't know you, my initial comment is because I don't want to see you get snuffed out). There's nothing you can do to solve these problems at this point and time, and they would prefer you protest so they can get your face, for the purposes of marking. Portland also is full of genuinely nutty people, been there several times and there is a real social contagion. You should be spending your time helping who you can, avoiding the authorities in general (never even speak to them), and understand that this "liberal democracy" is slowly collapsing and there's no stopping what's going to happen. We are being hollowed out entirely.
Freedoms aren't going to matter much when we are owned by every foreign nation but our own. I thought about 7 years ago that we could fix this with protesting, now I know that we can't. I'm just seeing this from a view of total loss while you see that there is yet still time.
Quick addendum: this is not me attempting to demoralize. I do think that once people can't pay for bread then maybe something will change. Up until that point the majority will give away every right for even the slightest relief, anything for a little hope of a better future. This has happened many times before. Empires rise and fall, it's nothing unique or out of the ordinary across history. First and foremost look out for yourself and your loved ones, and be willing to be flexible
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> against the will of our elected officials
Did you mean your local officials?
In the Federal model of US government, state authority overrides centralized government except in the explicit cases enumerated by the Constitution.
So yes, of course they mean their local officials, because in this case there isn’t an explicit line in the Constitution explaining why the feds are allowed to invade Minnesota.
yep. It's not in the constitution, but in all practicality mcculloch vs maryland (which i would love to see repealed) disagrees
The Supreme Court has disagreed with you on the matter of federal immigration constitutional authority for more than a century. There isn’t any “invasion”; that’s a propaganda device.
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Don’t do it, your project here on zig is a much larger net positive for civilization than you spending your time at those protests.
<3 zig and want io interface in everything!