No, that’s pretty accurate

Conservatives are the people selling myths like the morality of enlightened self interest, and liberals are the ones trying to make the current system fair

Leftists are the ones saying “holy fuck, come on guys, this is clearly insane. We grow way more than enough food for everyone, can we please start from deciding no one will starve and work backwards from there?”

I wouldn’t say further… They’ve been here for a while, now they’re competing on how loudly they can say the quiet part out loud

The people he was forced to pay for goods and services, he meant to stiff them

I love how he literally named things in his field of view for this. That speech certainly included words

Or he could do what most of the county wants, and give us meaningful change. That’s what has been drawing voters since Obama, that’s why Trump won in the first place - Hillary is the status quo incarnate

But we’ve been strung along for way too long, he needs to take a stand and make some enemies

Madison, a former employee, basically described a terrible working environment. She was bait and switched on several aspects of the role, and only found out after giving up her US visa and moving to Canada. She was constantly berated, sexually harassed in many ways, made to manage an only-fans despite making her discomfort known, the expectations of releases were unreasonable and her coworkers sabotaged her by knowingly setting her up to release videos with incorrect facts. Taking any of this to HR, or even Linus himself, ended with her being laughed off or told to stop being a tattle tale

All this is alleged and there’s a lot more, but the kicker to me is the fact she cut her leg bad enough to need staples, because going to the ER was the only way she felt she could get badly needed time off.

That’s what seals it for me - either she’s a borderline nightmare, or the working situation is far beyond the pale. Add in the fact the pressure to release, inaccuracies, and public glimpses of Linus’s attitude, and I’m inclined to believe it’s more true than false

Is it though? That amount of money is meaningless to a company, which Linus loves to talk about these days.

The problem is, he shit all over a startup company, failed to return the prototype after multiple requests, then when called out on it offered to pay for it and phrased his response to make it seem like he hadn’t spent months ghosting them until another YouTuber brought attention to the issue.

Shitting on it - fine, he’s extremely harsh every time it’s brought up, but he can have his own opinion. I think it’s a bad take, he doesn’t even entertain the idea that they might lower the price, improve it to work on multiple models, or maybe this fits a high end niche for PC ricing - it sounds impractical now, but maybe a few sales would be enough for them to make a more practical version

But whatever, I can get over that. The fact that he didn’t say “we had some miscommunication in my team, this is our bad, we’re having growing pains and I never would have sold it if I knew they wanted it back. We reached out to them to make them whole, but we’ll do better” is pretty incriminating.

That’s not owning up to their mistakes - either they knowingly ignored requests to give it back, which is fucked up, or someone made a mistake and he made excuses instead of owning up to it, and tried to quietly bury the problem and fire back on the guy who called them out

To your point, they published a method that could be replicated in less than a week in basically any college or lab in the country.

Fraud makes little sense here - this screams exuberance to me

Oh, there’s always a deal, at least for him. The rules do not apply evenly to start with, and even though he’s not that rich, he’s still part of the aristocracy.

Even though he broke all sorts of laws that contain the words “betrayed your nation to foreign adversaries”, started a sloppy coup last time he lost an election, and basically bragged about it in between perjuring himself, the best solution for everyone is for him to quietly fade into irrelevance.

It’s always better not to make a martyr if you can help it, it just isn’t worth it

Plus, the cruelest punishment I can think of is letting him use up the last couple years of his charismatic energy out of the public eye, so when he inevitably comes back he’d reveal himself to be the rambling dementia patient he’s been for a while.

And I don’t mean that as an insult - read his speeches. His delivery is amazing. Take that away and just read them (especially from the most recent ones), and even if you realized he was spewing word salad it’s still shocking

I think this is incredibly important, in some ways this instance in particular, but no one can ask for more from you

Nothing to apologize for - you’re not leaving everyone high and dry, you’re hanging in there and working through what sounds like a personally difficult transition.

So I’ll just say this: thank you for taking the responsibility thrust on you with due seriousness. Most people don’t understand the importance of community, and what we owe to it.

When you hand it over, do it knowing your part is done, fully and completely.

And if you need to step away, step away - do the exchange from a distance, and if things fall through and no one you trust is there to take it, that’s okay too.

I think there’s a certain amount of responsibility when you find yourself at the center of something, but that responsibility only goes so far - if you need to step down and the community won’t step up, that’s not on you

New leamurs, if you’re looking around and feeling lost or disappointed, don’t give up on Lemmy just yet.

Numbers are growing fast, apps are getting better by the day, and the fediverse is even more diverse than Reddit

If you’re looking for a starting place…

1. <Lemmy.world> is the biggest and most neutral server. It’s got lots of content, although discussion about the future is dominating the conversation, so you’re going to see the same posts at the top if you don’t change the sorting algorithm. People are up for a friendly debate, but it stays civil. Moderation is good, occasionally you’ll see removed comments but you’re not likely to run into it unless you’re being an ass

2. <Sh.itjust.works> is big and full of shitposts. They’re trying out direct democracy… In theory (not a week in and the admin called for a second vote against defederating exploding.heads…i think being very conservative with defederating is good, but it doesn’t show a ton of commitment to the idea). It’s pretty wild over there, but not in a bad way

3. <Pawbs.social> furries are always a big presence among early adopters, and they’re really welcoming. They don’t care if you’re a furry so long as you don’t judge them, and I’ve always found them welcoming

4. <Beehaw.org> is what I’d describe as a safe space. Highly moderated, strict codes of conduct…I can see the value in it, but that kind of vibe makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel like everyone is on edge, waiting for the next fight. A lot of little like it though, more power to them I guess

And obviously we know why we’re here.

Despite what people say about it not mattering where you go, it definitely does matter. Account switching is the one feature every app prioritized - I’d use it until you find a home. Personally, I’m going to start looking for a smaller instance, I think it’s important for the fediverse to grow, but I like the feel of the Internet back in high school when it was just getting big, when you made an effort to connect because there were so few people on any given social media

No matter what it is you’re looking for, you can find it or build it here - and because of the structure of it, no one can take it from us as long as the dream stays alive