I can almost understand the Personal Liberties Libertarian, which I think is what the philosophy was originally supposed to be about. But we often see Corpo-National Libertarians or Totally-Not-An-Anarchist-I-Swear Libertarians, and both of those are baffling to me.
Yeah. If this hadn’t been banned already in Canada, it makes me wonder what other laws I just assumed were common in Western republics and democracies actually aren’t.
Well, time to fill my life with meaningless debauchery, because it’s not like there’s a future to plan for.
Wait, wait, wait… The average middle-class voter who is struggling to get by is starting to turn away from the Tories and their leader’s suggestion is to reduce taxes on the wealthiest people? Not to improve services or perhaps address the issues that drove former conservative party voters to Labour. No. Cutting the taxes of the elite, further reducing funding for services that the majority of voters use or rely on is the obvious answer.
I also noticed that both here on Lemmy and over on Reddit that there’s been a push of pro-Russian talking points and a huge push towards Islamaphobia for the past few days, starting just before the attacks this weekend.
I understand there’s going to be some natural anger over the attack, but the amount of accounts I’ve seen, especially noticeable here on Lemmy because we just don’t have as many users, who are saying things like, “This is just what Muslims are like,” and, “Western countries accept these kinds of people, so expect them to do the same there,” and other racist bullshit talking points. They’ve also been painting the ongoing conflict as unquestionably one-sided in Israel’s favor.
It’s depressing but kind of to be expected that there’s a psyops campaign going on trying to get people outraged at not just Hamas, not just Palestine, but all of Islam right now while simultaneously trying to paint Ukrainian surrender and pro-Russian propaganda. This horrible act of terror was either in part planned by Russia or at the very least is seen as an easy opportunity to try and weaken Western support of repelling their invasion of Ukraine. Just spending a little time in the wrong circles on social media should make that obvious.
Is it actually reducing harm to fight to the last Ukrainian though?
When Russia is trying to commit genocide against Ukraine? Yes.
One of the things that made me really like Sanders when he was first campaigning for president was when I looked up his record on American war and he had a voting record that tended to follow a quote from him that amounted to something like (paraphrasing), “War should be the last resort, but if a war is started, we need to see it fully see it through.”
It’s not like siding with Ukraine and getting into that conflict is supporting warfare. It’s seeking to prevent warmongers from profiting off a senseless war. The idea that abandoning Ukraine to just be invaded and allowing Russia to get whatever they want by force is an, “Anti-war,” stance is fucking absurd.
I thought Lemmy was supposed to be the best free speech alternative
I don’t think there’s any useful definition of a “good” free speech website. Because everyone’s going to disagree on the criteria of what makes one good. Myself, I like more moderation, but I like that moderation to be held accountable in an attempt to keep the moderation higher quality and honest. Some people see free speech as no moderation, total anarchy, and I hate that, I’ve seen some websites that tried that, it turned into hate speech and revenge porn and other terrible things very quickly.
I don’t really know how you can threaten someone when you need them more than they need you.
If you leave town, where are you going to go? The city doesn’t need you. If you’re not making what you want/need here, go ahead, leave, the city won’t be hurt by it. You will, though. Because you’ll have to pack up your business, set it up somewhere else, and hope that they do the things you want them to. It’ll be expensive for you, won’t mean a thing to the city.
So how is it a threat?
You joke, but I’ve seen those kinds of arguments, especially online.
Some time back, someone argued that global warming was a self-solving problem because the oceans reflect light and heat energy back out into space, so as the earth warms and the oceans rise, the ability to reflect that heat will increase and we could even go back into an ice age because of it.
That is, of course, not really how it’s going to go. Massive ecological collapse and possible human extinction would occur due to the initial warming, first off, even before you get to the arguments about… Everything else at the crux of that.
For a long time, one of the talking points of climate change denial wasn’t that it wasn’t happening but that it was normal for us to go through heating and cooling cycles, so just deal with it and wait it out, we survived the last ice age so we can survive this heat wave, right? But again, that’s mostly bullshit.
If Chicken can be a language, that can be a language!
And I don’t mean the actually useful programming language. I mean the esolang one where the only valid character is Chicken.
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OK. I think I see more where you’re coming from now. I would say, though, that if the management weren’t rushing production and were better, well, managers, problems like that would be less likely to happen. It’s not that it would never happen, but from what we’ve seen of LTT over the years, this isn’t an isolated incident. While I like the on-screen personalities of people in their logistics department, the truth is that it’s been a mess and has been allowed to continue being a mess. As CEO and owner, ultimately that blame falls on Linus, but it also falls on the head of logistics and other management positions. You could chalk it up to one innocent mistake made by one employee, but it’s at least three mistakes compounding on top of each other which are part of a larger system of mismanagement.
I feel like you think I think that the person who put the block on the table at LTX should be the one being called out. I’m talking about Linus taking responsibility for the toxic management culture at the company, for the management and executives to acknowledge that their treatment of their employees is problematic, and accepting that they are doing things wrong and it needs to change. I’m not talking about a scapegoat and I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that I am.
I’m going to assume most of the stuff about that apology was done in private, where things can be properly be talked about.
Nope. Public. He discussed it with his victim first just how much she was comfortable with him sharing publically, and then he shared everything that she was comfortable with him sharing all publically.
Basic summary which will miss a lot of context because it looks like this is all really a few years coming:
(For ease of flow, I will be using quotation marks in much of this comment, but these are paraphrasing, not direct quotes.)
A YouTube channel called Gamer’s Nexus (GN) put out a video talking about Linus Tech Tips (LTT/LMG) and how they have, through incompetence, negligence, or malice, been putting out bunk data and doing really bad hardware reviews at least in the past year, and some guessing of why it happened. In that video, GN also addressed a controversy over Billet Labs, a relatively new company that is trying to build water blocks for custom water loops. LTT did a video with their prototype some time back, in which they lost the 3090Ti that was sent with the block, Linus decided to instead use it on the 4090 someone grabbed by accident, complained that the water block didn’t work, and went on to say it’s an overly expensive gimmick that didn’t work and no one should ever buy it despite not testing it on the hardware that it was made for. At the time, Linus was called out for this and dismissed criticism saying, “Even if the block had done better on the proper hardware, it was impossible it could have improved,” and, “None of it changes the conclusion that no one should ever buy it.” Billet Labs asked for their prototype (and GPU) back, and LMG said they would send it back. They asked for it back again, were told it would be shipped soon. Then LMG auctioned the block off to the public at the Linus Tech Expo (LTX).
In response to the GN video, Linus Sebastion, owner, founder, and Chief Visionary Officer of LMG, posted on the LTT forums several things such as, “The Gamer’s Nexus video was journalistic dishonest because they didn’t contact us before releasing the video. If they had, they would have gotten important context such as how we didn’t sell the water block, we auctioned it off for charity. And we’ve already come to an agreement with Billet Labs to reimburse them for the block.” The rest of the post went on to deflect blame and never really address the crux of GN’s video which was mostly about the bad data LMG has been putting out in their videos, seemingly caused by an untenable release schedule. GN responded in their weekly news video calling out Linus’ response for gaslighting, lying, and more. He also contacted Billet Labs and found out that they had not come to an agreement for reimbursement, and in fact that since the water block had been auctioned off that they only heard back from LMG about two hours AFTER GN’s first video had been released.
After that, people on Reddit, Twitter, Lemmy, and other social media started looking back at previous accusations against LTT, LMG, Linus Sebastion, and other related entities and saw a long pattern of bad behavior that had mostly been dismissed in the past. A former employee, Madison Reeve, posted a long series of posts on X (Twitter) detailing a toxic work environment mostly consisting of toxic management treating employees like they should be happy to work there when they have a nearly impossible task of getting a tremendous amount of content out at an accelerated rate for a barely livable wage for the city that they’re in. But on top of that experience that she said was shared with many other employees, she as a woman also faced a lot of misogyny and even some sexual harassment, eventually culminating in her self-harming quite seriously simply in the hopes that she wouldn’t get in trouble for taking a day off.
Since Madison’s allegations, LTT made an apology video which did not really address the sexual harassment allegations or even the toxic workplace stuff. What it did have, however, were a couple of humorous seques to their sponsors, some bloopers, LTT merch, a reminder to visit the LTT store, and Linus again trying to deflect the blame away from himself. In my opinion, the apology comes off worse than tone deaf, it comes off as downright insulting even if you pretend that they didn’t know about the Madison Reeves accusations before making it. Now, finally, they have gotten Linus to potentially shut the fuck up like he probably should have from the start and the recently-hired new CEO is stepping in to say, “I’m appalled at these accusations, we’re going to not only conduct our own review but also hire someone to review us.” Keep in mind, however, this was someone who, when it was announced that they’d hired him, Linus said on the WAN Show that he’d been a shadow-CEO working at the company for six months to make sure that he fit with the corporate culture and got along with management. Meaning that he knew about their toxic management before he formally accepted the job.
To some extent, I agree. But while you’ll never craft a perfect response and some people will always call your response, “Not enough,” or, “Disengenous,” there are better and worse ways to do it. Dan Harmon sexually harassed a coworker, created a toxic work environment, and harmed one of his writer’s careers. When that started to come out, he talked to her first, then he laid all the cards on the table, took full responsibility, and talked about how he’s trying, not always succeeding, but trying to improve and not do the same things again. It’s impossible to ever say that a simple apology is enough, but even the person he hurt said that his was the kind of apology that people should strive for. It was brutal, honest, and it didn’t shy away from anything. He admitted fault and talked about the very real and non-idealized path forward.
LMG’s response… Was horrible. Even if the apology was only for the bad data stuff, it felt like one of his joke videos like the April Fool’s Day slave farm video, in tone. Sponsor segues, jokes, merch promotions, things like that. I admit that maybe a little humor could be justified because some people make jokes when they’re stressed out, I do that! My mom was damn near on her deathbed a few years back, barely made it out of that alive, and between the sobs, I cracked jokes because that’s how I handle things, so I fucking get that! But that was a scripted video that was supposed to be their apology to the fans, and it felt like an insult. They didn’t feel like they were taking the accusations seriously, it didn’t feel like they were taking responsibility for the problems, and it didn’t feel like they were serious about making changes going forward. It felt like a hollow, “This will help us ride out the storm,” response.
So, I agree with you that even if they’d done the best apology video they possibly could have, people would have still criticized them for it. You’re right. There’s no way around that. But it doesn’t change that that’s not what they did. They put out that apology video instead. And that was just an insult.
So its interesting that these issues are coming out near the same time.
I don’t think it’s that unusual, really. LTT and Linus specifically have had people accuse him before of being unprofessional or creating a toxic work environment or bolstering a toxic fanbase or putting out bad content or all those things. Things I didn’t know about because I just started getting into his stuff a couple of months ago. But all those things are being reexamined now because he lost favor for a second. The Gamer’s Nexus video opened him up to be criticized where normally he’d have a loyal fanbase that would rush to his defense. But even then, it wasn’t until he made that first bad response and Gamer’s Nexus responded to the response and called out his gaslighting on the topic that a lot of the controversy blew open.
People who had long been ignored or felt like they weren’t safe to speak out against the harm they felt LMG or Sebastion had done to them saw an opportunity to let their voice be heard. And people who had been ignored in the past are being looked at again in new context and by more people. This is a common thing. People often feel frightened to speak out about something because they feel they’ll be dismissed or punished for it. Everything from people simply telling them to suck it up because that’s just life to people threatening violence to people getting you blacklisted. This is why after just a couple of sexual abuse allegations started coming out, an entire flood of them suddenly were made public and #MeToo happened. That was a case where speaking out against producers, writers, directors, actors, or anyone else big in the motion picture industry would usually be an end to your career, so most people weren’t willing to do it. And most of the ones who had spoken out in the past were made fun of, actually laughed at, before being blacklisted and relatively forgotten by the wider audience. An individual victim had no power to do anything, but once a few did, some of the others joined, and then it became a movement.
The LTT scandal won’t be anywhere near the same size as that, of course. It’s one relatively small company. But my point is that it’s the same phenomenon at a different scale. The group and specifically Linus have a fan base that has been absolutely brutal to dissenters before. Sebastion on the WAN show and in previous replies to criticism always dismisses it as invalid and that emboldens his fanbase to hit back at people who are, “Just hating,” or, “Don’t understand what they’re talking about!” The Gamer’s Nexus videos started to form a little wedge between Sebastion and his fans as they showed how he wasn’t being fair to them either. That created an opening.
Huh… For troubleshooting, would you be able to boot into something other than Windows and see if the problem persists?
I guess they’re trying to insinuate that there’s a conflict of interest because he worked for a government agency and Wikileaks leaked documents pertaining to that government agency.
But, like… That would be like saying no judge could oversee the case of someone who attacked a courthouse because they work for the same legal system. That would be a real loophole in the law if by breaking the right ones, you just couldn’t be tried anymore.