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Tech CEOs attend Amazon-funded "Melania" screening at White House
- camillomiller 9mo agoOn the night of Alex Pretti's execution by Border Patrol, big tech CEOs think it's a great idea to show up at the preview of the most pathetic movie in existence. This goes beyond "having to seat at the table" to change things, like Tim Cook often said. This is high level simping. I am so disgusted. These are the people y'all work for.
- toephu2 9mo ago[flagged]
- seattle_spring 9mo agoPerson A: "We should improve society somewhat." A certain Person B: "Yet you participate in society! Curious!!" Some more info on the "Tu Quoque" logical fallacy being employed by the certain person B: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
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- Trasmatta 9mo agoSo many apologists for Tim Apple over the past year, but I think this is just who he is. Gladly embracing fascism and authoritarianism.
- toephu2 9mo ago[flagged]
- iJohnDoe 9mo agoVery true. This is why Hitler was surrounded by so many people. They went where the power was. Even if it’s not “who he is”, it is who he became. The nazis were prosecuted decades later. Tim Cook’s actions shouldn’t be magically forgotten once Trump is out of office. This pattern has historical precedent. Adolf Hitler’s inner circle included people like Albert Speer, a trained architect who was not an early ideologue but aligned himself with power as the regime consolidated control. Speer benefited professionally, became Minister of Armaments, and later claimed political detachment. These claims were rejected at Nuremberg, where he was convicted for his role in the Nazi state. The fact that alignment can be opportunistic rather than ideological did not absolve responsibility then, and it should not automatically do so now. Accountability is not erased simply because a political era ends.
- dissent 9mo agoThere's a big difference between being a party member actually in a government position (war related, no less), and being a businessman surviving under that regime. You're not only making an absurd comparison, you're calling for punishment for somebody who hasn't even remotely broken any laws. Can't you see you're being authoritarian?
- dpkirchner 9mo agoSomehow I doubt Tim Cook would have trouble surviving if he did not choose to bend the knee.
- dissent 9mo agoHe might be lynched by his shareholders :)
- politelemon 9mo agoLaw and morality are not the same thing. The apologism for Apple on HN is comically and selectively gymnastics. I think the biggest shame here is the brand identity for a corporation that many of you have self deluded into adopting. Even now the voices that tell you to stop bootlicking them and warning against them get shouted down.
- codyb 9mo agoYea, Apple's decision to have its CEO embrace fascism has really destroyed a ton of my goodwill towards the company and I'm actively looking for alternatives, delaying further purchases, and encouraging others to do the same. Doesn't help that they appear to have shot all of their UX designers into the sun judging by the most recent iOS and MacOS upgrades.
- bigyabai 9mo agoDon't forget that he did it for Trump's first admin too. Cooperation with the government seems to be an imperative beyond the CEO's control.
- deepfriedchokes 9mo agoCapitalists only care about capital. Witness how fast the DEI stuff was jettisoned once it was determined to be unprofitable under the current administration.
- JuniperMesos 9mo agoDEI programs were (largely) incentivized by one political faction in the United States primarily via legal rather than market mechanisms, and in response to this a rival political faction explicitly ran on undoing those legal mechanisms to disincentivize DEI programs. Of course one of the ways the government can enact policy is by making something cheap or expensive for firms participating in capitalism to do, which incentivizes their behavior; but characterizing DEI programs as something that corporations jettisoned because it was determined to be "unprofitable under the current administration" ignores the fact that the current administration explicitly promised to end DEI programs in a political campaign in a democracy and then won an election.
- nicbou 9mo agoHere’s to the crazy ones
- smrtinsert 9mo agoIt's pathetic on many levels but I cant shake the most obvious one to me, the nerds are being forced to worship the school bully and his girl
- tecoholic 9mo agoWow. That’s a breakdown I will remember for a long time.
- greyface- 9mo ago> being forced to Choosing to.
- mikeyouse 9mo agoForced means something else when you’re among the most rich and powerful people on earth - they chose to do this. It’s far more demeaning and should haunt them to their graves.
- CamperBob2 9mo agoBezos can afford anything on Earth, but he can't afford to alienate Trump. Tariffs could end Amazon overnight. Same is true for Musk, whose fortune hinges on government largesse and regulatory collegiality. But Apple? Screw those asshats, they have no such excuses.
- Supermancho 9mo agoAdam from Adam Does Movies can't wait to do a recrap of Melania and my family is excited to see THAT.
- treetalker 9mo agoPlease, God, let Mel Brooks make one more film after Spaceballs 2.
- 7e 9mo agoWhat could possibly be in this movie other than Melania constantly suing news outlets who ran reports she was a sex worker?
- jsbisviewtiful 9mo agoand she’s an immigrant.
- codyb 9mo agoBoycott all these goobers.
- deaux 9mo agoWould be easier if half of HN didn't work for them. There's a reason why these posts get maybe 20 comments on here whereas ones showing similar allegiance to the Party by companies half of HN doesn't work at get 600. But hey, vests too juicy.
- llbbdd 9mo agoand/or come up with some kind of civil disobedience that isn't some antiquated waste of time. boycott? why not just pray about it and see if that works?
- codyb 9mo agoYou don't think boycotts work? You should ask Target how they feel about that comment. And, amazingly enough, "boycott all these goobers" is not the _only thing_ in the world a person can do at once. But sure, keep hurling money at people you despise while talking about how others should do better.
- JohnFen 9mo ago> "boycott all these goobers" is not the _only thing_ in the world a person can do at once. This. Boycotts can be effective and important tools, but they aren't sufficient all by themselves. No tool is.
- llbbdd 9mo agoBut they aren't. Weren't the same people boycotting like Starbucks and McDonalds recently over the kerfuffle with Israel? Last I checked neither of those gigantic companies reacted to that at all except for firing people and shutting down stores that were already underperforming, if that was the goal of the boycott then they nailed it.
- duxup 9mo agoI was on a website and got a “sign Melania’s birthday card” advertisement. Super creepy.
- zmmmmm 9mo agoAll I can say is remember. Remember the hypocrisy, the spineless lack of values, the willingness to engage, effectively, in corruption. That should be the permanent understanding you now have of these people. Next time they are up on stage telling you how great their new product or service is - make sure your first thought is, the person selling me this put corruptly pandering to an authoritarian wannabe dictator ahead of their own integrity. If they have no integrity, why should I trust anything they say about this product they are now pitching to me?
- sillyfluke 9mo agoIt's kind of wild that the founder of this venerable company shared the same stage with Khashoggi's fiance pre-Covid. It's like attending a memorial of an assasinated Belarus activist and then following it up by attending the premiere of a propaganda movie about Putin's wife. Someone inside Amazon should keep tabs on the actual non-inflated viewing numbers of this amazing blockbuster for posterity's sake. Edit: Bezos is not listed as attending (elsewhere Tony Robbins and Mike Tyson are)
- defrost 9mo agoI'm amazed that Klemen Slakonja's First Lady Melania Trump documentary made it out of Slovenia. It's certainly a beautiful country.
- troyvit 9mo agoOh is this the schlock they can get to play at the Trump Kennedy Center now?
- Gud 9mo agoA friendly reminder that the western world too is ruled by oligarchs and is democratic in name only. It is time to take control over the means of production.
- gdubs 9mo agoLong way from the "Think Different" era Apple. Been thinking about that campaign this week. Posters of people like MLK, which Jobs had to get permission for from each and every estate for the campaign. When Apple was solidly, unambiguously positioned as the computer for the rebels, the misfits, the crazy ones. If nothing else, there was an opportunity to simply say that given the day's events, a movie screening didn't feel right. Or – "hey there's a gigantic winter storm covering half the country, and I have a lot of logistical stuff to take care of."
- bigyabai 9mo agoI dunno. I also think about how Jobs swindled and mistreated Woz time after time, many of the nerds who cut their teeth on the Apple IIc were appalled by the road he took. By the time the Macintosh released, Apple had cemented themselves as a capricious OEM with no interest in serving every minority niche. Actions like this feel fully contiguous with Jobs' personality, to me. He wasn't afraid to mistreat large swathes of customers, fans or employees if it meant that Apple could cosmetically pull ahead of it's competitors. He didn't feel obligated to fight fair or defend his moral righteousness, and neither does Cook. This is the exact same Apple you always knew, they've just quit virtue signalling.
- JuniperMesos 9mo ago> Long way from the "Think Different" era Apple. Been thinking about that campaign this week. Posters of people like MLK, which Jobs had to get permission for from each and every estate for the campaign. When Apple was solidly, unambiguously positioned as the computer for the rebels, the misfits, the crazy ones. "Think Different" was an advertising slogan that Apple Computers, a publicly-traded corporation with thousands of employees, paid an advertising company to create in the late 90s in order to promote a certain image of the company, because the leadership at the time thought it would help them sell more computers. And it clearly worked (or at least didn't abjectly fail) because Apple Computers is still around today and is an even larger corporate entity with a much larger market cap. Whether a marketing campaign succeeds in appealing to you emotionally has nothing to do with whether rebels, misfits, crazy people, or any other category of person would be better off buying and using computer products made by Apple. I've personally never liked Apple products, I've always felt like they took a lot of practical control away from the end user in order to facilitate what Apple leadership thinks the end user _ought_ to want. So I avoid using their products, and I think other people should to, although I respect that the walled garden Apple provides is a computing product some people do find it useful to pay for. Leadership at Apple computer was probably engaging in political activities some people at the time objected to when those ads were made, just as they are today.
- 1attice 9mo agoWild that this post is flagged despite explicitly being about the tech industry
- mindslight 9mo agoDoes anybody else just tacitly hash to "melanoma" ? I'm sure it's a beautiful name in the original Slovenian context, but in the US the only time he hear it is talking about someone who is in a bunch of photographs with Epstein, so it's natural to form some negative associations.
- jnaina 9mo agoNot sure why such an interest in this poor remake of "Pretty Woman". I'd rather wait for SpaceBalls 2.