As someone who has written my share of test262 tests, I would say that it's a good test suite - better than most languages, not that this is a high bar - but very, very far from being "comprehensive" in the sense of "passing the tests is sufficient to be confident your implementation is accurate".
Many bugs in JS engines end up looking like x = [1, 1, 1, 1, 1,]; delete x[2]; Array.prototype[2] = 'length'; x[x[2]] // memory corruption. This example is made up but illustrative; real bugs are often more complex than that. It's not really feasible to write tests for that kind of thing in advance of writing the engine.
There are also a few areas that are tricky to write good tests for without relying on a whole chain of other features. You can’t access the generator functions prototype without creating a generator function. To create a generator in another realm you need to use the eval function from that realm and it has to get the realm handling correct.
Given the complexities involved in eval I wonder how many implementations would correctly handle the swapping of eval functions between realms.
We do actually have literally that test, and there are other tests which would fail if you don't get realm handling for cross-realm eval at least approximately correct (e.g.). It is a pretty good test suite!
But yes, the broader point that there's a lot of stuff like this which is tricky to test is entirely correct, and only a fairly small subset actually is tested presently.
Yeah, that was one of the ones I was looking at just last week. :-) I think we have a fairly large set of tests that assert that A === B or A !== B, but don’t check the relationship of A and B to a third object C which would help show that A and B aren’t both wrong.
En masse the tests generally cover those cases, but individually it can take some figuring out to understand why fixing an obvious problem suddenly causes a previously passing test to start failing.
founder supporting the white replacement theory and fascism
I know he runs in the same circles as some people who do (e.g he publicly supported DHH in the last ruby controversy, and ladybird gets money from FUTO) and that made me suspect that even if he himself isn't a fascist, it doesn't seem to be a dealbreaker for him. Do you happen to have a link to any of his direct comments on either white replacement or fascism, though?
Oh. Thanks. I do read his blog, but I might have let that post drift by because it seemed focused on Omarchy, which was already on my radar. (Sometimes I don't go "below the fold" when the stuff "above the fold" is both familiar and unpleasant. In this case going past the first couple screens would've been informative. And unpleasant.)
I wish people would stop talking about this stuff in every ladybird thread. Andreas is a very reasonable human being and you can talk to him, and actually have a conversation about these things if you want more than just taking small soundbites that people read the worst of all interpretations into.
I'm glad that people on lobste.rs generally consider human and political context of technologies important and keep it highlighted.
The last time when a conversation here about Ladybird involved its author's position I was able to follow the links and see for myself that the "soundbites" do describe it pretty accurately.
I can't believe I finally agree with Drew DeVault on something
I remember disagreeing with Drew in the past, on what I can’t remember, but Drew is pretty consistently “correct” on most things. Definitely a truth seeker, and definitely someone who shows the receipts. I respect that.
He has toned down a lot (which is nice and I hope he feels better) but was banned here for a reason back then. [Generally don't recommend saying people are truth seekers, that's one way to hide behind something.]
Can you elaborate on why you don’t recommend saying people are “truth seekers”? I’m not familiar with negativity towards this, and would like to learn! I only meant that Drew seems to be someone who has integrity and doesn’t just call things out without evidence (even if I don’t always agree with the things he says).
To me "Truth seeker" is way too close to the typical pattern of I am just asking questions, done by people hiding behind free speech for obvious dog whistles - In my country it's specifically "Surely one is still allowed to say/ask [XYZ]" weaponized as shield against criticism, generally from the far right.
If you told me that he is generally trying to get to the bottom of things, that's totally fair - but generalizing him as a truth seeker puts him on a very high pedestal while giving a free pass for his actions in the name of truth. And I think the internet has shown that truth is really complex.
seems to be someone who has integrity and doesn’t just call things out without evidence
That is way more nuanced to me than a truth seeker stamp of approval :)
Thank you for the explanation! I get your point and will be more cautious.
To me
Here’s a funny thing, and this is not calling you out, but the general idea that words don’t mean anything concrete anymore. Their definitions are fuzzy, which is definitely adding to the problems we see in general discourse.
I wish people would provide links when they say such things rather than leaving it as an exercise to the reader to do the research and/or for people to argue in the comments over whether a person is/isn't a white supremacist or whatever without context. IMO, if you're going to drop such a comment, you should also take the time to publish the receipts with it. It is a charged accusation, and if you're going to make it, then back it up.
That said, if a person has espoused these views, I see no reason why people should stop talking about it in every thread. It's relevant and each time a project is mentioned there are new people exposed to it. If I was totally unaware of Ladybird or some other project, that's information I'd want to have before diving into it.
DHH is also not a nazi. I strongly disagree with his political views as well, but that does not automatically make him a nazi. That attitude prevents any reasonable discussion and I hope this community can be better than that.
You can disagree with someone, someone's views and still attempt to understand where they are coming from and without labeling them.
I mean, DHH is not goose-stepping and wearing a Nazi uniform, if that's your criterion for calling someone a Nazi. But he has publicly endorsed the great replacement theory, which is pretty central to the neo-Nazi movement as it exists today. I think that's enough to call him a Nazi.
He used to be on the patron supporters credit read for a fairly left wing media criticism podcast, Citations Needed. I absolutely noticed when his name stopped being read there, it was right when he started to vocalize these right wing things.
reasonable discussions cannot be had with these people. you can say you "strongly disagree" all you want. but at the end of the day you're choosing to argue with the people calling out nazi rhetoric instead of the people who regurgitate it (referring to the reply under your top level comment trying to sane-wash white replacement theory)
so your actions make it pretty clear where you stand
reasonable discussions cannot be had with these people.
I found that it's much easier to have reasonable discussion in person than on the internet. In general what I learned over many years is that there is a lot less that divides us, once we're willing to engage in conversations. That does not mean that we will come to a full agreement, but it enables us to make a lot more progress.
so your actions make it pretty clear where you stand
I don't think you can make a lot of assumptions about "where I stand" based on a conversation like this. However I have written plenty about how I see life on my two blogs, so if you are curious you could read that. Yet related to what I mean before, I don't think it's a good idea to try to reduce people to your immediate impression based on how they might fall based on a few tweets or comments, which are usually a great reduction of sometimes quite complex thoughts.
I found that it's much easier to have reasonable discussion in person than on the internet. In general what I learned over many years is that there is a lot less that divides us,
Is the burden of proof on a random lobster commentator for showing that dhh or ladybirds creator have more nuanced views?
'Cause while I agree with your premise, using their platform to spread (what is to me) awful and lacking-any-empathy-for-minorities political views without ever adding nuance, like your blog does, is a thing that sure makes it look like a duck who quacks too far to the right.
Is the burden of proof on a random lobster commentator for showing that dhh or ladybirds creator have more nuanced views?
I don't know the answer to this question. I just notice that any discussion about ladybird or Andreas on this website has become impossible because within a few minutes of the submission someone will drop a comment about someone's political leanings.
'Cause while I agree with your premise, using their platform to spread (what is to me) awful and lacking-any-empathy-for-minorities political views without ever adding nuance, like your blog does
"Like my blog does"? I heard a lot of stuff over the years about my writings, but that is new to me. Care to elaborate?
I just notice that any discussion about ladybird or Andreas on this website has become impossible because within a few minutes of the submission someone will drop a comment about someone's political leanings.
Seems like a chicken-and-egg problem where somebody said something racist/fascist without every clarifying and now can't do much without it still being brought up. I personally don't blame people for calling behaviour out, in the case of this topic, I'm more interested in Servo or a comparison of it, it can be a great alternative without the awful BDFL view (afaik).
I don't have an answer for any of this, but I don't have any empathy for the image dhh and ladybird's creators have found themselves in.
Care to elaborate?
Honestly, I was heavily in doubt if I should post my comment because it's straight up off-topic, so I don't want to elaborate on it. There are socials on my github page(through lobster profile) so feel free to DM if possible, but I will say that your "What’s a Foreigner?" elicits for me(a person of color/minority in The Netherlands) a more interesting and thoughtful discussion than whatever I've seen from the people mentioned in this thread.
edit: think we've might misunderstood each other, I don't mean to say your blogposts lack nuance.
I took them to mean your "blog does" "adding nuance" in contrast to the others being discussed, but that's just my charitable interpretation without knowing for sure what they meant and without having read your blog (sorry ;-)).
The thing I dislike about this and other "paradox of tolerance" type things is that the people who say this stuff are the most likely to find just about anything to be "nazism". Not yet a full decade ago, "Nazis" included progressive political analysts who quoted Omar Wasow and left-wing journalists who interviewed black people during the BLM heyday. This stuff fatigues everyone and people stop taking Nazism seriously. It also makes the politically incorrect "nazis" more sympathetic to ordinary people and it makes those of us on the left seem like extremists by association.
Yeah. I'd hope that to most people it'd be clear from looking at the main "evidence" of that blog post that the accusations of fascism or nazism are ridiculous. But IDK if that's the case.
Like, there's such a thing as being "too high on your own farts" (not sure if this expression exists in English, but i hope it's meaning is self-evident enough). As a simpler example, take extreme vegan postures. I think not eating animals is good; and i'd like humanity in general to reduce it's dependency on the cruel and unnecessary practice of industrial animal butchering. But i also think that vegans that treat any non-vegan person as a murderer are not doing any good to the cause of reducing animal suffering. On the contrary, that loud minority becomes an easy target to point out as "see? these people are nuts!" and then dismiss the whole idea of not killing so many animals as ridiculous.
I think a similar thing happens with these light accusations of fascism on the internet. If we start calling reasonable people like Kling fascists, what word are we going to use for people who really support fascist shit and are actively working today to erode democracy and civil rights?
I think a similar thing happens with these light accusations of fascism on the internet. If we start calling reasonable people like Kling fascists, what word are we going to use for people who really support fascist shit and are actively working today to erode democracy and civil rights?
That's simple: fascists.
I haven't called Kling a fascist and I'm not yet ready to do so -- but looking over a few things he's said and people he's voiced sympathy for (e.g., Charlie Kirk, DHH), I'm also not willing to extend "reasonable people" to him either. My current read of Kling is that he's far more supportive of the far-right (e.g. fascists) than far-left. I could be wrong, in part because the public statements that I've seen seem crafted to provide deniability. Perhaps he is not someone who would actively support fascism, but he does not seem actively bothered by it either.
Extremist groups use all sorts of methods to normalize their rhetoric and ideas. That includes getting support from "reasonable" people who claim they don't support the extremist views, but also really just want everybody to be able to calm down and have a conversation, and don't ever ostracize anybody for political views or bring politics into the workplace, etc.
As you rightly note, there are people working today to erode democracy, civil rights, and worse. Those people couldn't be openly doing those things without support and passive acceptance. Anything shy of denouncing and opposing a fascist movement is essentially supporting it.
I haven't called Kling a fascist and I'm not yet ready to do so -- but looking over a few things he's said and people he's voiced sympathy for (e.g., Charlie Kirk, DHH), I'm also not willing to extend "reasonable people" to him either.
This also summarizes my view of Kling and, consequently, the Ladybird project itself. In retrospective, in my first message I should've written that he does often symphatizes and gives voice to people like Kirk and Lunduke.
(Edit: I mostly tried to sit this topic out, but calling someone a white supremacist isn't something we should be taking lightly, so I don't think just flagging a post is right in this case...)
The title kind of rings like that but I would encourage you to read all of it, and you can look through my post history, including this thread, to see that I'm as far removed from dog whistling at white supremacist slop as it gets when I'm saying that.
I think it's a very real and remarkably prescient take on the erosion of discourse that facilitated the re-entry of the far-right into mainstream politics across Europe, and has normalised the kind of social violence and segregation that thirty years ago we'd have thought we'd put behind us. It's a problem we're all struggling with, across the entire continent.
I do think there should be red lines in a civilised society. I'm not going to politely disagree with anyone over things like whether my sister should have the same rights that I have or whether black British citizens should have the same status as white British citizens. That goes beyond mere differences in where we're leaning politically, it gets into people wanting to put my family and friends in harm's way so nuh-uh. But this post is really not that. Or if it is, I definitely missed it.
Since this is hanging on a commend thread, about a post that I wrote about the Austrian presidential election in 2016, I want to understand how any of this discussion has anything to do with "Europe for Europeans". Like how is this even remotely relevant to what is being discussed here?
I mean, one of Kling's publicly stated beliefs was praise for Charlie Kirk (https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1966456391146606806). Kirk lied about George Floyd and voter fraud, spread Covid conspiracies, explicitly called for Christian supremacy, denounced the (fictitious) "LGBTQ agenda", and claimed there was a rise in trans mass shooters.
So, either Kling agrees with some subset of Kirk's abhorrent beliefs, or he's too out-of-the-loop to offer an opinion in public. It's probably the former.
And it's not just a one-off accident, either. He's retweeted several aggrieved white techies, and a lot of people heard of him for the first time over his CoC controversy.
I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists.
Could not be more explicitly about non-violence (the exact thing you're accusing him of).
I feel like I've completely lost my mind with this discourse.
I think the reason people are kind of torn on this specific endorsement may be related to some of the words with which this person engaged young people. Or do you think Andreas didn't mean this particular part of his quest to engage young people with words? Which ones do you think he meant, specifically, and why?
I haven't generally wanted this in the past, but this thread and the AI slop flag thread are nudging me toward wanting at least a temporary ignore feature per-user.
Nah, man, I get it, I, too, hope that more math nerds carry on Ted Kaczinsky's quest to deliver booming discoveries. By which of course I mean that I hope more of them prove new results in the study of boundary functions, I mean, what else could that possibly mean!?
who I can assure you, probably doesn't want anyone dead.
I... don't think you can assume that, actually. Voicing support for an abhorrent person is still support. Even if someone doesn't wish to personally wield the hammer, it doesn't let them off the hook.
I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists.
Could not be more explicitly about non-violence (the exact thing you're accusing him of).
Again, just reiterates that Kling is either naive or disingenuous, to say such a thing about Charlie Kirk. (Kirk literally built campus watch groups to profile professors' speech, he had zero genuine commitment to free speech or its ideals.)
As for violence, look up "stochastic terrorism". An increase in the number of people publicly calling for violence against a minority corresponds with increases in actual violence, even if not directly done by the speaker. If you go to a football game, do you think the fans who cheer are indifferent to their team, just because they're not on the field?
I don't believe retweeting others who call for violence allows you to claim the mantle of nonviolence yourself.
I... don't think you can assume that, actually. Voicing support for an abhorrent person is still support. Even if someone doesn't wish to personally wield the hammer, it doesn't let them off the hook.
I think you've been completely politically polarised and warped by whatever corners/groups you interact with in real life or online.
A random browser developer/founder doesn't want you dead. He just happens to have different political views (which you don't like).
To these people, ‘if you want black people dead, that'd be a strong motive to lie about George Floyd’ and ‘if we disagree about George Floyd, you're a liar’ becomes ‘we disagree about Floyd, therefore you're a liar, therefore you must want black people dead’.
Even the most disingenuous people with the most blatant double standards, racism, sexism, unjustified prejudice against other belief systems, etc., their disingenuity is easily explained by strong emotional attachment to their news sources, their political tribalism, their ancestry, etc. But some people can't fathom that.
That's ignoring the times when the person making the judgment of racism or sexism or other prejudice is the one with the actual blatant prejudice, which is tainting their judgment. And, of course, even the most blatant prejudice on its own is not enough to infer, ‘wants the people they're prejudiced against dead’.
Why is there a barfight at my garden party? Oh well. I suppose I'll run and grab my fiddle since we're turning this place into a pub. (Tips are accepted.)
To the point. I really try to see all sides, but I'm having trouble to see the difference between some opinions posted here (while decrying the whole discussion, nonetheless) and "he's only lifting his right arm and not punching anyone, so what gives?".
I'd prefer Lobsters' Overton window to not move to the right simply because Big Tech Bro says it's fash-ionable (sorry).
My reply to you is on-topic for your comment, but not on-topic for the site. I'm still going to leave it here because it's fun, and I feel like that's necessary at this specific moment.
mods are, in fact, paying attention to this thread. just so you know. it's important to get things right when we step in, so sometimes we take our time and allow people to show their entire asses first.
Political off-topic pile-ons as showcased here bring out the worst in this community. People come up with all sorts of vile labels and the comments rarely get taken down. I don't understand why it's tolerated again and again. The inaction is promoting a certain kind of behavior that I'd rather see nipped in the bud.
I understand the idea of letting people go off the deep end before you intervene (it makes it admin action unarguably correct when it happens), but at the same time you are making Hacker News look peaceful, technical and apolitical.
This right here is a beautiful discussion of the same article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120899.
And as for this Lobsters page, only 8% of the comments are on the article. The rest is off topic (including our comments), leaving a very low SNR.
Tend your garden and pluck the weeds. You let the weeds grow which is why you have briars. You promised me a garden party.
zero regression is pretty cool. it's nice to have a comprehensive test suite
As someone who has written my share of test262 tests, I would say that it's a good test suite - better than most languages, not that this is a high bar - but very, very far from being "comprehensive" in the sense of "passing the tests is sufficient to be confident your implementation is accurate".
Many bugs in JS engines end up looking like
x = [1, 1, 1, 1, 1,]; delete x[2]; Array.prototype[2] = 'length'; x[x[2]] // memory corruption. This example is made up but illustrative; real bugs are often more complex than that. It's not really feasible to write tests for that kind of thing in advance of writing the engine.There are also a few areas that are tricky to write good tests for without relying on a whole chain of other features. You can’t access the generator functions prototype without creating a generator function. To create a generator in another realm you need to use the eval function from that realm and it has to get the realm handling correct.
Given the complexities involved in eval I wonder how many implementations would correctly handle the swapping of eval functions between realms.
We do actually have literally that test, and there are other tests which would fail if you don't get realm handling for cross-realm
evalat least approximately correct (e.g.). It is a pretty good test suite!But yes, the broader point that there's a lot of stuff like this which is tricky to test is entirely correct, and only a fairly small subset actually is tested presently.
Yeah, that was one of the ones I was looking at just last week. :-) I think we have a fairly large set of tests that assert that A === B or A !== B, but don’t check the relationship of A and B to a third object C which would help show that A and B aren’t both wrong.
En masse the tests generally cover those cases, but individually it can take some figuring out to understand why fixing an obvious problem suddenly causes a previously passing test to start failing.
Huh. I thought they seemed pretty intent on Swift.
They abandoned that effort: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/pull/7999
Cool, too bad Ladybird is riddled with controversies (founder supporting the white replacement theory and fascism) :/
I know he runs in the same circles as some people who do (e.g he publicly supported DHH in the last ruby controversy, and ladybird gets money from FUTO) and that made me suspect that even if he himself isn't a fascist, it doesn't seem to be a dealbreaker for him. Do you happen to have a link to any of his direct comments on either white replacement or fascism, though?
Drew DeVault wrote about this last autumn
Oh. Thanks. I do read his blog, but I might have let that post drift by because it seemed focused on Omarchy, which was already on my radar. (Sometimes I don't go "below the fold" when the stuff "above the fold" is both familiar and unpleasant. In this case going past the first couple screens would've been informative. And unpleasant.)
I have an impression that he is more often after blood than not, when writing about other people.
moronic slander, fuck this whole website
how bad is FUTO? from their links it looks ok?
https://www.futo.org/about/what-is-futo/
I'll throw it back to Drew for now.
I wish people would stop talking about this stuff in every ladybird thread. Andreas is a very reasonable human being and you can talk to him, and actually have a conversation about these things if you want more than just taking small soundbites that people read the worst of all interpretations into.
I'm glad that people on lobste.rs generally consider human and political context of technologies important and keep it highlighted.
The last time when a conversation here about Ladybird involved its author's position I was able to follow the links and see for myself that the "soundbites" do describe it pretty accurately.
Same here. I remember thinking "wow this is even worse than advertised – I can't believe I finally agree with Drew DeVault on something" ;)
I remember disagreeing with Drew in the past, on what I can’t remember, but Drew is pretty consistently “correct” on most things. Definitely a truth seeker, and definitely someone who shows the receipts. I respect that.
He has toned down a lot (which is nice and I hope he feels better) but was banned here for a reason back then. [Generally don't recommend saying people are truth seekers, that's one way to hide behind something.]
Can you elaborate on why you don’t recommend saying people are “truth seekers”? I’m not familiar with negativity towards this, and would like to learn! I only meant that Drew seems to be someone who has integrity and doesn’t just call things out without evidence (even if I don’t always agree with the things he says).
To me "Truth seeker" is way too close to the typical pattern of I am just asking questions, done by people hiding behind free speech for obvious dog whistles - In my country it's specifically "Surely one is still allowed to say/ask [XYZ]" weaponized as shield against criticism, generally from the far right.
If you told me that he is generally trying to get to the bottom of things, that's totally fair - but generalizing him as a truth seeker puts him on a very high pedestal while giving a free pass for his actions in the name of truth. And I think the internet has shown that truth is really complex.
That is way more nuanced to me than a truth seeker stamp of approval :)
Thank you for the explanation! I get your point and will be more cautious.
Here’s a funny thing, and this is not calling you out, but the general idea that words don’t mean anything concrete anymore. Their definitions are fuzzy, which is definitely adding to the problems we see in general discourse.
I wish people would provide links when they say such things rather than leaving it as an exercise to the reader to do the research and/or for people to argue in the comments over whether a person is/isn't a white supremacist or whatever without context. IMO, if you're going to drop such a comment, you should also take the time to publish the receipts with it. It is a charged accusation, and if you're going to make it, then back it up.
That said, if a person has espoused these views, I see no reason why people should stop talking about it in every thread. It's relevant and each time a project is mentioned there are new people exposed to it. If I was totally unaware of Ladybird or some other project, that's information I'd want to have before diving into it.
I strongly disagree with this.
Making people responsible for their fascist takes when they are de facto face of the project is extremely important.
These people need to be called out otherwise we just enable them further.
the world doesn't need polite nazis
Sure? But Andreas is not a nazi.
sure endorses a lot of nazis and nazi takes for a not-a-nazi
https://drewdevault.com/2025/09/24/2025-09-24-Cloudflare-and-fascists.html
DHH is also not a nazi. I strongly disagree with his political views as well, but that does not automatically make him a nazi. That attitude prevents any reasonable discussion and I hope this community can be better than that.
You can disagree with someone, someone's views and still attempt to understand where they are coming from and without labeling them.
I mean, DHH is not goose-stepping and wearing a Nazi uniform, if that's your criterion for calling someone a Nazi. But he has publicly endorsed the great replacement theory, which is pretty central to the neo-Nazi movement as it exists today. I think that's enough to call him a Nazi.
He used to be on the patron supporters credit read for a fairly left wing media criticism podcast, Citations Needed. I absolutely noticed when his name stopped being read there, it was right when he started to vocalize these right wing things.
[Comment removed by author]
reasonable discussions cannot be had with these people. you can say you "strongly disagree" all you want. but at the end of the day you're choosing to argue with the people calling out nazi rhetoric instead of the people who regurgitate it (referring to the reply under your top level comment trying to sane-wash white replacement theory)
so your actions make it pretty clear where you stand
I found that it's much easier to have reasonable discussion in person than on the internet. In general what I learned over many years is that there is a lot less that divides us, once we're willing to engage in conversations. That does not mean that we will come to a full agreement, but it enables us to make a lot more progress.
I don't think you can make a lot of assumptions about "where I stand" based on a conversation like this. However I have written plenty about how I see life on my two blogs, so if you are curious you could read that. Yet related to what I mean before, I don't think it's a good idea to try to reduce people to your immediate impression based on how they might fall based on a few tweets or comments, which are usually a great reduction of sometimes quite complex thoughts.
Is the burden of proof on a random lobster commentator for showing that dhh or ladybirds creator have more nuanced views?
'Cause while I agree with your premise, using their platform to spread (what is to me) awful and lacking-any-empathy-for-minorities political views without ever adding nuance, like your blog does, is a thing that sure makes it look like a duck who quacks too far to the right.
I don't know the answer to this question. I just notice that any discussion about ladybird or Andreas on this website has become impossible because within a few minutes of the submission someone will drop a comment about someone's political leanings.
"Like my blog does"? I heard a lot of stuff over the years about my writings, but that is new to me. Care to elaborate?
Seems like a chicken-and-egg problem where somebody said something racist/fascist without every clarifying and now can't do much without it still being brought up. I personally don't blame people for calling behaviour out, in the case of this topic, I'm more interested in Servo or a comparison of it, it can be a great alternative without the awful BDFL view (afaik).
I don't have an answer for any of this, but I don't have any empathy for the image dhh and ladybird's creators have found themselves in.
Honestly, I was heavily in doubt if I should post my comment because it's straight up off-topic, so I don't want to elaborate on it.
There are socials on my github page(through lobster profile) so feel free to DM if possible, but I will say that your "What’s a Foreigner?" elicits for me(a person of color/minority in The Netherlands) a more interesting and thoughtful discussion than whatever I've seen from the people mentioned in this thread.edit: think we've might misunderstood each other, I don't mean to say your blogposts lack nuance.
Sorry yes, I misunderstood what you said.
The primary comment box is still there, y'know.
I took them to mean your "blog does" "adding nuance" in contrast to the others being discussed, but that's just my charitable interpretation without knowing for sure what they meant and without having read your blog (sorry ;-)).
Hopefully it stays that way.
c'mon
The world doesn't need calls for political violence either.
This link gave me psychic damage
No kidding, I think I've had enough lobste.rs for today. Actually I think I've had enough lobste.rs for quite some time.
Wow, things I thought I'd never say about either seafood or the Internet...
the political violence started when people espoused nazi ideology. any retaliation is self defense and morally justifiable
The thing I dislike about this and other "paradox of tolerance" type things is that the people who say this stuff are the most likely to find just about anything to be "nazism". Not yet a full decade ago, "Nazis" included progressive political analysts who quoted Omar Wasow and left-wing journalists who interviewed black people during the BLM heyday. This stuff fatigues everyone and people stop taking Nazism seriously. It also makes the politically incorrect "nazis" more sympathetic to ordinary people and it makes those of us on the left seem like extremists by association.
Your childish view of the world makes reasonable discourse impossible.
Yeah. I'd hope that to most people it'd be clear from looking at the main "evidence" of that blog post that the accusations of fascism or nazism are ridiculous. But IDK if that's the case.
Like, there's such a thing as being "too high on your own farts" (not sure if this expression exists in English, but i hope it's meaning is self-evident enough). As a simpler example, take extreme vegan postures. I think not eating animals is good; and i'd like humanity in general to reduce it's dependency on the cruel and unnecessary practice of industrial animal butchering. But i also think that vegans that treat any non-vegan person as a murderer are not doing any good to the cause of reducing animal suffering. On the contrary, that loud minority becomes an easy target to point out as "see? these people are nuts!" and then dismiss the whole idea of not killing so many animals as ridiculous.
I think a similar thing happens with these light accusations of fascism on the internet. If we start calling reasonable people like Kling fascists, what word are we going to use for people who really support fascist shit and are actively working today to erode democracy and civil rights?
That's simple: fascists.
I haven't called Kling a fascist and I'm not yet ready to do so -- but looking over a few things he's said and people he's voiced sympathy for (e.g., Charlie Kirk, DHH), I'm also not willing to extend "reasonable people" to him either. My current read of Kling is that he's far more supportive of the far-right (e.g. fascists) than far-left. I could be wrong, in part because the public statements that I've seen seem crafted to provide deniability. Perhaps he is not someone who would actively support fascism, but he does not seem actively bothered by it either.
Extremist groups use all sorts of methods to normalize their rhetoric and ideas. That includes getting support from "reasonable" people who claim they don't support the extremist views, but also really just want everybody to be able to calm down and have a conversation, and don't ever ostracize anybody for political views or bring politics into the workplace, etc.
As you rightly note, there are people working today to erode democracy, civil rights, and worse. Those people couldn't be openly doing those things without support and passive acceptance. Anything shy of denouncing and opposing a fascist movement is essentially supporting it.
This also summarizes my view of Kling and, consequently, the Ladybird project itself. In retrospective, in my first message I should've written that he does often symphatizes and gives voice to people like Kirk and Lunduke.
https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2016/5/18/for-our-children/ This you?
That is my blog yes. Curious why you looked for this post in particular. What are your thoughts on it?
It reads like it was written by a white supremacist.
What exactly in this post is in any way about white supremacy? I really take issue with this assertion.
Did you only read the title? Honestly, if this post reads like white supremacist I don't understand the world anymore
(Edit: I mostly tried to sit this topic out, but calling someone a white supremacist isn't something we should be taking lightly, so I don't think just flagging a post is right in this case...)
The title kind of rings like that but I would encourage you to read all of it, and you can look through my post history, including this thread, to see that I'm as far removed from dog whistling at white supremacist slop as it gets when I'm saying that.
I think it's a very real and remarkably prescient take on the erosion of discourse that facilitated the re-entry of the far-right into mainstream politics across Europe, and has normalised the kind of social violence and segregation that thirty years ago we'd have thought we'd put behind us. It's a problem we're all struggling with, across the entire continent.
I do think there should be red lines in a civilised society. I'm not going to politely disagree with anyone over things like whether my sister should have the same rights that I have or whether black British citizens should have the same status as white British citizens. That goes beyond mere differences in where we're leaning politically, it gets into people wanting to put my family and friends in harm's way so nuh-uh. But this post is really not that. Or if it is, I definitely missed it.
Words lose their meaning when you throw them around completely inappropriately. If we can't use words to communicate anymore then nothing works.
if this kind of contentless, meaningless, toxic, bitter, graceless, slanderous sniping bullshit is acceptable on this forum then ban me forever
it's pretty easy to ban yourself. hanging out and spewing venom to defend "europe for europeans" type stuff is completely optional.
Since this is hanging on a commend thread, about a post that I wrote about the Austrian presidential election in 2016, I want to understand how any of this discussion has anything to do with "Europe for Europeans". Like how is this even remotely relevant to what is being discussed here?
deactivating my account doesn't pack the same punch, I'd rather have the admins explicitly eject me if this is the forum they want
you guys are crossing the line that separates merely bad posting from actual bad faith slander and the destruction of civility
if mods can't recognize this the forum is completely fucked
[Comment from banned user removed]
That doesn't make any sense. If they live in a European city they are de facto European. Please at least say out loud what you really mean.
[Comment from banned user removed]
To spell it out to you:
Yes, that is indeed unacceptable.
I personally don't really care about the authors political leanings (Which I feel like is the minority here).
I just want a decent alternative browser that isn't bankrolled by big tech companies.
I feel the project would have a lot more fans if he'd kept his politics to himself.
It's nice to not care when it's not you the one they want dead, gone, plus your friends and family too.
That's quite a leap for you to assume based on his publicly stated beliefs.
Really?
I mean, one of Kling's publicly stated beliefs was praise for Charlie Kirk (https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1966456391146606806). Kirk lied about George Floyd and voter fraud, spread Covid conspiracies, explicitly called for Christian supremacy, denounced the (fictitious) "LGBTQ agenda", and claimed there was a rise in trans mass shooters.
So, either Kling agrees with some subset of Kirk's abhorrent beliefs, or he's too out-of-the-loop to offer an opinion in public. It's probably the former.
And it's not just a one-off accident, either. He's retweeted several aggrieved white techies, and a lot of people heard of him for the first time over his CoC controversy.
Look I personally find that endorsement to be as abhorent as you do, but absolutley nothing here supports this claim:
I'm assuming (they) here refers to the founder Andreas, who I can assume you, probably doesn't want anyone dead.
The praise in question:
Could not be more explicitly about non-violence (the exact thing you're accusing him of).
I feel like I've completely lost my mind with this discourse.
I think the reason people are kind of torn on this specific endorsement may be related to some of the words with which this person engaged young people. Or do you think Andreas didn't mean this particular part of his quest to engage young people with words? Which ones do you think he meant, specifically, and why?
They're just asking questions. C'mon, man! :-(
I haven't generally wanted this in the past, but this thread and the AI slop flag thread are nudging me toward wanting at least a temporary ignore feature per-user.
Nah, man, I get it, I, too, hope that more math nerds carry on Ted Kaczinsky's quest to deliver booming discoveries. By which of course I mean that I hope more of them prove new results in the study of boundary functions, I mean, what else could that possibly mean!?
I'm not here to speculate on his specific beliefs. You can speculate and draw your own conclusions about the guy.
You seem primarily upset that people are doing precisely that.
I... don't think you can assume that, actually. Voicing support for an abhorrent person is still support. Even if someone doesn't wish to personally wield the hammer, it doesn't let them off the hook.
Again, just reiterates that Kling is either naive or disingenuous, to say such a thing about Charlie Kirk. (Kirk literally built campus watch groups to profile professors' speech, he had zero genuine commitment to free speech or its ideals.)
As for violence, look up "stochastic terrorism". An increase in the number of people publicly calling for violence against a minority corresponds with increases in actual violence, even if not directly done by the speaker. If you go to a football game, do you think the fans who cheer are indifferent to their team, just because they're not on the field?
I don't believe retweeting others who call for violence allows you to claim the mantle of nonviolence yourself.
I think you've been completely politically polarised and warped by whatever corners/groups you interact with in real life or online.
A random browser developer/founder doesn't want you dead. He just happens to have different political views (which you don't like).
Anyone who defends fascism is definitely definitely defending the idea that lots of people should be dead, even if he doesn't know it.
"He just happens to have different political views" is an absolutely wild way to describe the white replacement conspiracy theory.
[Comment removed by author]
You're not going mad.
To these people, ‘if you want black people dead, that'd be a strong motive to lie about George Floyd’ and ‘if we disagree about George Floyd, you're a liar’ becomes ‘we disagree about Floyd, therefore you're a liar, therefore you must want black people dead’.
Even the most disingenuous people with the most blatant double standards, racism, sexism, unjustified prejudice against other belief systems, etc., their disingenuity is easily explained by strong emotional attachment to their news sources, their political tribalism, their ancestry, etc. But some people can't fathom that.
That's ignoring the times when the person making the judgment of racism or sexism or other prejudice is the one with the actual blatant prejudice, which is tainting their judgment. And, of course, even the most blatant prejudice on its own is not enough to infer, ‘wants the people they're prejudiced against dead’.
Why is there a barfight at my garden party? Oh well. I suppose I'll run and grab my fiddle since we're turning this place into a pub. (Tips are accepted.)
Because someone brought spiked beer.
You know the famous story about how to prevent your bar from becoming a Nazi bar? Basically that.
To the point. I really try to see all sides, but I'm having trouble to see the difference between some opinions posted here (while decrying the whole discussion, nonetheless) and "he's only lifting his right arm and not punching anyone, so what gives?".
I'd prefer Lobsters' Overton window to not move to the right simply because Big Tech Bro says it's fash-ionable (sorry).
My reply to you is on-topic for your comment, but not on-topic for the site. I'm still going to leave it here because it's fun, and I feel like that's necessary at this specific moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWVcIn7Q4Cc
That's entertaining. I haven't heard that one.
💵
The original host left ages ago, and the new host is busy ripping out the electrical work in order to replace it with a portable gas generator.
mods are, in fact, paying attention to this thread. just so you know. it's important to get things right when we step in, so sometimes we take our time and allow people to show their entire asses first.
Some people sure seem to be enthusiastically cooperating with that plan.
Sometimes the only winning move is not to play but to sit back and take copious notes.
Political off-topic pile-ons as showcased here bring out the worst in this community. People come up with all sorts of vile labels and the comments rarely get taken down. I don't understand why it's tolerated again and again. The inaction is promoting a certain kind of behavior that I'd rather see nipped in the bud.
I understand the idea of letting people go off the deep end before you intervene (it makes it admin action unarguably correct when it happens), but at the same time you are making Hacker News look peaceful, technical and apolitical.
This right here is a beautiful discussion of the same article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120899.
And as for this Lobsters page, only 8% of the comments are on the article. The rest is off topic (including our comments), leaving a very low SNR.
Tend your garden and pluck the weeds. You let the weeds grow which is why you have briars. You promised me a garden party.